En el budismo existe la expresión “el dedo apuntando a la luna,” lo cual es una forma de hablar acerca de nuestra naturaleza verdadera. Esta es una tarea sutil y compleja pues es muy fácil quedarnos enfocados en el dedo y perder de vista la luna. (En el Surangama Sutra, el Buda usó esta analogía para establecer la diferencia entre las enseñanzas—el dedo—y nuestra mente o naturaleza verdadera—la luna.) ¿Cómo usar palabras para describir aquello que está más allá de las palabras? El legendario filósofo chino Lao Tse empieza su obra cumbre, el Tao te ching, diciendo “El Tao que puede ser expresado, no es el Tao perpétuo.” Aun así, Lao Tse escribió ochenta y un versos sobre aquello que no puede ser expresado. 

Aunque sea una tarea imposible, muchos maestros han hecho grandes esfuerzos por transmitirnos la sabiduría de nuestra propia naturaleza con el propósito de inspirarnos a descubrirla por nosotros mismos, ya que, bien sea que la reconozcamos o no, esta naturaleza está totalmente presente y disponible para nosotros aquí y ahora. De hecho, está presente en todos los seres sintientes, desde una hormiga hasta el Buda mismo. Existe una metáfora que puede apuntarnos hacia el reconocimiento de esta naturaleza, pero a la cual los grandes maestros no tenían acceso ya que aún no había sido inventada: el cine. 

Cuando utilizo esta metáfora en mis charlas, empiezo por pedirle a los asistentes que recuerden la última vez que fueron al cine y les pregunto, “¿Qué es aquello sin lo cual la película no podría existir, y al mismo tiempo no se ve afectado por nada de lo que sucede en la historia?” Luego les digo que la respuesta debe ser tan concreta y simple que hasta un niño de seis años la podrá entender. Antes de seguir leyendo, tómate un momento para pensar cómo responderías. 

Eventualmente, alguno de los asistentes encuentra la respuesta que estoy buscando: la pantalla.

Luego, empiezo a hacer preguntas más específicas sobre la naturaleza de la pantalla en relación a la película. “¿Cuándo hay un incendio en la película, la pantalla se quema? ¿Si hay una inundación, la pantalla se moja? ¿Si en la historia de la película hay un salto de mil años en el tiempo, cuánto tiempo pasa para la pantalla?” Nota que nada de lo que sucede en la película produce cambios en la pantalla, y al mismo tiempo, sería imposible experimentar la película si no fuese por ella. La pantalla es fundamental e indispensable, está siempre presente, y aún así, para la gran mayoría de nosotros pasa totalmente desapercibida. Estamos tan hipnotizados por el drama de la película que nos volvemos ciegos a lo más importante y fundamental. 

Resulta que en la película de nuestra vida sucede exactamente igual. Estamos tan hipnotizados por las historias que nos contamos a nosotros mismos, que lo más importante pasa desapercibido. Es aquella naturaleza fundamental que está siempre presente, y que la tradición describe como una consciencia despierta, sin límites y sin tiempo, que no nace y que no muere—nuestro ser fundamental y verdadero. Descubrir esta naturaleza es liberarnos del hechizo que nos dice que lo único que somos es un ser limitado que un día nació y algún día va a morir; un objeto en medio de otros objetos en el mundo; un “ego dentro de un saco de piel” en palabras del escritor Alan Watts.  

Nuestra intuición nos hace creer que somos un pequeño “yo” fijo, independiente, permanente y desconectado de todo lo demás. Este yo parece vivir en algún lugar dentro de nuestras cabezas, detrás de nuestros ojos, y en medio de nuestros oídos, observando y escuchando un mundo externo que es a veces amenazante y otras veces seductor. Desde esta perspectiva, el yo se la pasa tratando de controlar al mundo y a los demás, a quienes ve también como objetos independientes y desconectados. Este es el estado de reactividad e insatisfacción constante que emerge cuando el pequeño yo se cree el centro del universo. 

Cuando emprendemos prácticas contemplativas, en donde por unos momentos dejamos de lado nuestras ideas preconcebidas sobre quiénes somos y qué es el mundo, y simplemente permitimos a la realidad mostrarse tal y como es, tenemos la oportunidad de percibir de una nueva manera. Podemos entonces reconocer una dimensión de la realidad que siempre ha estado presente, esperando a ser descubierta.

Al empezar a notar el cambio incesante de todo aquello que podemos percibir, ver, oír, sentir, o pensar, nos damos cuenta de que todas las formas percibidas son radicalmente impermanentes; las emociones van y vienen como el clima, los sonidos surgen y desaparecen al igual que los olores, sabores, objetos, y sensaciones. Y ni hablar de los pensamientos—aquellas imágenes y sonidos internos que, aunque son efímeros y transparentes, terminan casi siempre por dictar el rumbo de nuestras acciones, y por ende de nuestras vidas. 

Si todas estas formas están en constante cambio, ¿qué es entonces aquello que no cambia? ¿Qué es lo que ha estado siempre aquí, tanto en los momentos de dicha y gozo como en los de miseria y desespero? ¿Qué es lo que estaba igual de presente la primera vez que escuchamos el sonido apaciguante de la lluvia o el llanto desgarrador de otro ser humano? Todas las experiencias, desde las más sublimes hasta las más ordinarias, han ocurrido sin excepción en el espacio abierto de la consciencia despierta. Todas las formas son apariciones en el espacio de esta consciencia, siempre yendo y viniendo natural y espontáneamente como imágenes danzando en una pantalla de cine. 

Cuando giramos nuestro foco hacia el espacio en el cual sucede esta danza, podemos darnos cuenta de que es atemporal, libre de límites y de un centro fijo. Sin este espacio, sin esta consciencia despierta, sería imposible percibir forma alguna, de la misma forma que sería imposible ver escena alguna de una película si no estuviera la pantalla. Cuando esta consciencia se revela, se hace evidente que el yo que creíamos ser no es algo concreto y fijo—de hecho, no podemos encontrar nada que sea concreto y fijo. En ese instante nuestra percepción cambia, mostrándonos que el yo y el mundo no son tan “reales” como parecen; son más bien como una película, como un sueño. 

Generalmente, este primer reconocimiento es solo un instante, un atisbo hacia este espacio ilimitado. Pero al continuar la práctica, estos atisbos se hacen cada vez más frecuentes, así aprendemos a descansar en esta consciencia abierta y despierta, aprendemos a reconocerla y confiar en ella a lo largo de las diferentes situaciones de nuestras vidas. Eventualmente, empieza a ser evidente que nada de lo que surge está separado de esta consciencia, de la misma forma que ninguna imagen está separada de la pantalla, y ninguna ola está separada del mar. 

Esto nos brinda la posibilidad de abrir nuestro corazón y hacernos íntimos con cada instante de nuestra vida. Nos permite reconocer nuestra interdependencia y conexión con todos los seres y vivir en plenitud el misterio de la existencia desde la sabiduría y la compasión que emergen cuando reconocemos nuestra naturaleza verdadera, siempre presente aquí y ahora.  

***

In Buddhism there’s the expression “the finger pointing at the moon,” which is a way of speaking about our true nature. Doing this is a subtle and complex task, since it’s too easy to stay focused on the finger and lose sight of the moon. (In the Surangama Sutra, the Buddha used this analogy to establish the difference between the teachings—the finger—and our true mind or nature—the moon). How do we use words to describe that which is beyond words? The legendary Chinese philosopher Lao Tse begins his masterpiece, the Tao Te Ching, saying, “The Tao that can be expressed, is not the real Tao.” Even so, Lao Tse wrote eighty-one verses expressing that which cannot be expressed.

Although it’s an impossible task, many teachers have taken great pains to transmit the wisdom of our true nature with the goal of inspiring us to discover it for ourselves, since, whether we recognize it or not, this nature is fully present and available to us here and now. In fact, it’s present in all sentient beings, from an ant to the Buddha himself. There’s a metaphor that can point to the realization of this nature, but one which great teachers didn’t have access to since it hadn’t been invented: cinema.

When I use this metaphor in my talks, I begin by asking those present to remember the last time they went to the movies and I ask them, “What is that without which the movie couldn’t exist, but which at the same time isn’t affected by anything that happens in the story?” Then I tell them that the answer must be so simple and concrete that even a six-year-old child will be able to understand it. Before you continue reading, take a moment to think about how you’d respond.

Eventually, someone in the audience will give the answer I’m looking for: the screen.

Next I begin to ask more specific questions about the nature of the screen in relation to the movie. “When there’s a fire in the film, does the screen burn? If there’s a flood, does the screen get wet? If a time jump of a thousand years is portrayed, how much time elapses for the screen?” Note that nothing that happens in the movie produces changes on the screen, and at the same time, it’d be impossible to experience the movie without it. The screen is fundamental and indispensable; it’s always present; although for most of us, it goes completely unnoticed. We’re so hypnotized by the drama of the movie that we turn blind to what’s most important and fundamental.

It turns out that the movie of our lives is exactly the same. We’re so hypnotized by the stories we tell ourselves, that the most important element goes unseen. It’s that fundamental nature which is always present, and which the tradition speaks of as an awakened consciousness, without limits or time, which isn’t born and doesn’t die—our fundamental and true self. To uncover this nature is to liberate ourselves from the spell that says that we’re only a limited self who was one day born and who’ll one day die; an object in the midst of other objects in the world; an “ego in a skin bag,” in the words of the writer Alan Watts.

Our intuition has us believe that we’re a small “I,” fixed, permanent, and disconnected from everything else. This “I” seems to live somewhere inside our heads, behind our eyes, and between our ears, watching and listening to an external world which is sometimes threatening and other times seductive. From this perspective, the self spends its time trying to control the world and others—whom it sees also as independent and disconnected objects. This is the state of constant reactivity and dissatisfaction that emerges when the small self believes itself to be the center of the universe.

When we engage contemplative practices in which for a few moments we set aside our preconceived notions about who we are and what the world is and we simply allow reality to reveal itself exactly as it is, we have the opportunity to perceive in a new way. Then we can recognize a dimension of reality that’s always been present, waiting to be discovered.

When we begin to notice the incessant change that everything we see, listen, feel, or think goes through, we realize that all those perceived forms are radically impermanent; emotions come and go like the weather, sounds appear and disappear—same as smells, tastes, objects, and sensations. Not to mention thoughts—those internal images and sounds that, although transparent and ephemeral, almost always end up dictating the course of our actions, and in consequence, of our lives.

If all of these forms are in constant change, what then is that which doesn’t change? What is that which has always been present, both in moments of joy and of misery and frustration? What was equally present the first time we heard the soothing sound of rain or the heartbreaking cries of another human being? All experiences, from the most sublime to the most ordinary, have happened without exception in the open space of the awakened consciousness. All forms are apparitions in the space of this consciousness, always coming and going naturally and spontaneously like images dancing on a movie screen.

When we turn our focus toward the space in which this dance occurs, we realize that it is atemporal, limitless, and without a fixed center. Without this space, without this awakened consciousness, it’d be impossible to perceive any forms whatsoever, just as it’d be impossible to watch any scene of a movie without a screen. When this consciousness is revealed, it becomes evident that the I which we mistook for ourselves is neither fixed nor concrete—in fact, there’s nothing that is fixed or concrete. In this moment, our perception changes, showing us that the I and the world are not as “real” as they seem; rather they’re like a movie, like a dream.

Generally, this first insight lasts only an instant. It’s only a glimpse into this limitless space. But as we continue to practice, these glimpses become ever more frequent, and we learn to rest in this open and awake consciousness; we learn to recognize and trust it as we go through our lives. Eventually, it begins to be evident that nothing that arises is separate from this conscience, just as no movie image is separate from the screen, no wave is separate from the ocean.

This realization offers us the possibility to open our hearts and become intimate with every moment of our lives. It allows us to recognize our interdependence and connection with all beings and to live fully the mystery of existence from a place of wisdom and compassion that emerges when we recognize our true nature, always present here and now.

The post La iluminación es como ir al cine appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

You’d think it would be a piece of cake. I had been inspired to begin two bows a day—one at the beginning of the day and one at the end, in what the late Rev. Koyo Kubose called “Everyday Gassho.” The morning bow would be a “harmony gassho,” to mark my intention to help others and to play my small part in the symphony of the day ahead. The evening bow would be a “gratitude gassho.” For a Buddhist teacher who runs a temple, already bows multiple times a day, and prides herself in doing what she says she’s going to do, what could go wrong?

During week one, I failed to make a single Everyday Gassho. Once or twice I thought of my new bowing practice when I was outside the temple or lying in bed in the middle of the night: Oh, the gasshos! I had originally set my intention during a book group I was running, and if I hadn’t felt the need to report my progress to my students the week after, maybe I would have forgotten the whole project. I did report back, confessing my failure and vowing to try again.

The second week was marginally better. I managed two morning gasshos, but no evening gasshos. I started to get curious. What was going on? Why was it so difficult? Was I unconsciously rebelling? 

During discussion at the next book group, I thought I’d figured out why I was struggling so much with this seemingly simple practice. It was the word “harmony,” which Rev. Kubose used to describe the morning bow. The word just wasn’t inspiring me. One of the students was a harpist and loved the word, but to me it sounded weak somehow; it didn’t fire me up. I am a devotional Pure Land Buddhist and although I read devotion in between the lines of Rev. Kubose’s—and his father Rev. Gyomay Kubose’s—teachings, their mission was to bring Buddhism to America in a way that suited Americans. They often had a secular tang. How could I make this practice mine? 

I went back to reread what Rev. Kubose had written about the morning gassho. 

The underlying sentiment of the ‘harmony gassho’ is that you will try your best to have a spirit of cooperation with others, and always be as calm and patient as possible. The seed of this sentiment will gradually blossom into an understanding that can be called wisdom.

I got it. The morning’s gassho was offering ourselves to the Buddhas, to do their work. If I thought of my morning gassho as handing myself over to the safe hands of the Buddhas, of allowing the Buddhas to do what they wanted with me, then I felt fired up. Christians might say, “Your will, not mine.” Surrendering my small ego with its self-protective grasping to the unknown wisdom of the cosmos is something I can get behind. 

I decided to start again with this new understanding. Rather than referencing the word “harmony,” I thought of “handing myself over.” The following week I bowed more, and by the end of the week, I could acknowledge that the word “harmony” felt better to me than it had before. (I didn’t get to know Rev. Kubose very well before he died in March 2022, but from the time I did spend with him, I was pretty sure that he’d be chuckling fondly at me. “Look at her, making it so complicated! Just bow!”)

Finally, almost a month into the practice, I did just bow. I often did my harmony gassho to the big Buddha in the temple garden, before my morning nembutsu. Sometimes I forgot about the gratitude gassho until I got to the bedroom, but I have a shrine there too and so I often thank this small golden Buddha for everything I’ve received during the day. They are short moments, but they are poignant. 

I will be interested to see how this practice develops as I continue to incorporate it into my days. Here is what Rev. Kubose said about the gratitude gassho:

The underlying sentiment accompanying the Gratitude Gassho is an awareness of interdependency—that one is supported by nature, by other people, by everything. There is a feeling of “counting one’s blessings,” of “grace,” or of “how grateful I am.” The seed of this sentiment will naturally blossom and be expressed in compassionate ways.

This is certainly my experience of practice. As I put myself into good conditions, by having a short daily meditation or chanting practice, by making a conscious effort to spend time in nature, by getting together to practice with others a couple of times a week, these seeds will “naturally blossom.” As a result, I will be more able to be kind to the planet, to other living beings, and to myself. As we recite at the end of every practice session here at the temple: 

Blessed by Amitabha’s light
may we care for all living things
and the holy Earth. 

This morning I thought about the gasshos as “please” and “thank you.” In the morning I ask the Buddhas to help me live in harmony with others and our planet, and in the evening I say thank you for all I have received. I also think about them in the language of offerings: in the morning I offer my body, my unique qualities and my energy to be used to do good, and in the evening I take time to acknowledge the many offerings I have received in return. In breath, out breath. I am acknowledging the cycle of life that continues every day, every hour, and every second. I am connecting myself to something bigger. It feels good.

♦

Find Rev Koyo Kubose’s instructions for the Everyday Gassho here.

Read more about Satya Robyn here.

The post The Struggle of Everyday Gassho appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Sam peers at me from behind his dark-framed glasses. The lanky young man with bleached hair and interesting tattoos on his left arm is a graduate student at a nearby university. He sees me for weekly therapy sessions, and mostly we talk about his anxiety. Sam is studying to be a programmer at a software company. Recently, he worried aloud, “Why do I keep studying for this job that will just make money for a boss who already has it all? It doesn’t make sense.” He continued, “We just build algorithms that make people even more addicted to their devices. I want to put my energy into something that gives meaning to my life.”

This is not an easy time to find meaning for ourselves. 

I listen to friends and clients who experience their lives as empty and purposeless—those who feel aimless or adrift. There are plenty of reasons for people to hide, hibernate, stop working, experience anxiety and depression, or feel numb to the affairs of our world. Over fifty years ago, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl told us that we were living in a “vacuum of meaning,” but the existential crisis he was describing then seems even more salient now.

Like Sam, many of my young clients worry about what their future will look like and how they’ll find a sense of meaning. For me, the image of the Greek hero Sisyphus comes up. 

While many see Sisyphus as a symbol of futility—condemned by the gods of Mount Olympus to roll a heavy stone ceaselessly up the mountain, only to see it roll down again—the French existentialist Albert Camus had a different view. In Camus’s interpretation, Sisyphus pushes his stone forward with an attitude of knowing and dignity. He knows that he has no say about whether or not to complete his arduous task over and over again, so he uses what choice remains and decides to replace sorrow with joy. 

I have come to see Sisyphus as a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who chooses to forgo entry into nirvana until the last suffering being is saved. 

Friedrich Nietzsche told us, “He who has a ‘why’ can bear almost any ‘how.’” For the bodhisattva, the purpose of relieving suffering is the why, and an exquisite presence, akin to what Sisyphus experiences while rolling the stone up the hill, is the how. 

But, as Doctor Tseten Dorjee, His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s personal doctor, told me this past summer, “Just any meaning-making is not enough.” Higher meaning, he writes in one of his books, includes altruism, which is driven by an understanding of our interdependence and rooted in the “groundless ground,” or the foundation out of which all phenomena rise and dissolve back into again and again the sacredness of being.

Indeed, much of our suffering comes from what meditation teachers Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach both refer to as “the delusion of separateness,” or our misperception of seeing ourselves as isolated from others instead of as interconnected. “Inter-being-ness,” as the late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh called it, is our true nature and the deeper reality of our world. We are all part of the web of life, interdependent and interconnected, and the current challenges in our world are largely due to our “delusion of separateness,” or seeing another person or group of people as “them,” standing in opposition to “us.”

When we see ourselves as modern versions of Sisyphus, however, rolling not only our personal stone but the stone of humankind up the hill, or when we go further still and see Sisyphus as a whole community of “planet people” rolling the stone of the human condition up the mountain, we can feel our heartfelt connection to others. Even though we don’t know what the outcome will be, as a community of bodhisattvas, we support one other so we don’t burn out.

Meaning emerges for the bodhisattva from connection, or joining with others and touching the field of being. Understanding that everything in life is interdependent and constantly co-arising, she relates to the stone as sacred—part of the interdependent web of life. This insight that we are all connected, that we are all relatives, gives rise to a deep, loving care. With roots reaching deep and branches spreading out wide, the bodhisattva can sustain herself. 

Just so, if we can go beyond our identity as a separate self and begin to understand our identity as part of a much larger whole, the burden of having to fix things alone subsides, and meaning emerges. Touching and being touched by the groundless ground, we are protected from burning out. We are the ocean, and we are the wave. We are Sisyphus, and, as a community, part of a much bigger interdependent web of life. Being fully engaged for the sake of us all allows us to grow into a new opportunity for living a meaningful life.

Last week, I saw Sam again. He had taken two months of leave from university to walk the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage route in Spain. For six weeks, he walked about fifteen miles a day with a heavy backpack and slept in hostels at night. Walking through the dry Spanish countryside, he met many others who had left their homes to ask what matters in life. He told me about 31-year-old Lan from Singapore, who, after seven years as an accountant, felt bored and empty. There was 25-year-old Ben, whose company in London had failed with Brexit and COVID-19. Ben had told Sam that he would keep walking until he found inspiration for some meaningful way to contribute to society. Sean and Lyn, who both had just passed the Bar exam in New York, wanted time to think deeply before committing themselves to the stressful professional path they had chosen. Pascal, from France, had just come from a ten-day silent vipassana retreat and hoped that Camino and meditation would help him shift from his administrative job to something that would connect him in a more personal way with others. 

Sam walked the Camino with a whole gaggle of international friends. Now, back at home, he did not feel so alone anymore with his questions. Through the experience, he had come to see the Camino, or the way, not as a goal but as a process. He realized that what mattered was the journey, and that this journey, and the journey of life, gave him a sense of community and belonging. Having made the choice to prioritize meaning and connection over career and earning power, he found his anxiety lifted. Just before leaving my office, Sam told me how surprised he was to feel a sense of trust in life—trust that new doors would open to him in time.

The post Meaning Matters appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

It may be the pain of our own suffering that brings us all to begin practice, but both the Buddha and Shantideva insist that our practice must address the suffering of all beings. What is the relationship between personal suffering and suffering that is created through the structures of our society? This Dharma Talk proposes the term “structural selfishness” to discuss the ways that a fixed idea of self hinders our practice, while offering insight on how to embrace the complexity of interdependence. Overcoming structural selfishness can transform the way we respond both our own pain and to that of all beings, and the quality of care we show to ourselves, each other, and the world.

Malcolm Martin is a dharma heir of Barry Magid and a teacher at the UK Ordinary Mind Zen School. He has worked for the last ten years as a part time Buddhist Chaplain in prisons in the United Kingdom.

The post You Can’t Be Yourself By Yourself: Overcoming Structural Selfishness appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The noble words “compassion” and “wisdom” appear everywhere in Buddhist teaching, and they offer us an attractive way of imagining our future selves. We know that when we cultivate our minds, wisdom and compassion will be the result, exactly as they were for the Buddha. Yet this thinking overlooks a key detail. In the days leading up to his enlightenment, Prince Siddhartha would probably have seemed unattractive, even frightening—and the very opposite of noble. Filthy, starving, and alone, he had allowed himself to become completely and abjectly helpless. And here’s the detail that we may overlook: only this condition made it possible for Siddhartha to wake up. Only the experience of helplessness could take him beyond the limits of the self.

Core features of the dharma point to helplessness as the transcendent experience, not as a moral failure, a cause for shame, or a condition to be overcome through heroic feats of self-discipline. I’ll even go so far as to argue here that Buddhism sacralizes helplessness as the place where wisdom and compassion both arise. Not until events escaping their control bring people face-to-face with their helplessness will they discover that they belong to something larger than themselves: an “unlimited body,” in the Lotus Sutra’s words. To find the Buddha’s wisdom is to recognize this shared body as what we really are, while compassion arises when our sense of helplessness moves us to action in the world.

Even though we try to keep it out of view, we encounter helplessness everywhere we turn at each stage of life. As children we rely on our parents’ care, and once we start school we depend on the guidance of our teachers. No matter when our education stops or how many diplomas we hang on the wall, we’ll need other people’s help when we’re looking for a job, scouting out decent childcare, or investigating places to retire. Eventually we’ll have to get an assist crossing the street or rising from a chair. And now, over 16 grueling months, we’ve faced helplessness on a global scale, whether or not we lost our jobs, had to view our mother’s funeral on Zoom, or found a landlord’s padlock on our door.

Yet if you’ve grown up in the United States, you know how people can respond to helplessness—sometimes with sympathy, true enough, but often with anger, disbelief, and, on occasion, even open contempt. I’m sure that many of us fell speechless as we watched the clips of then-candidate Donald Trump belittle a reporter with a disability while a packed stadium cheered him on. Yet Trump was just acting from a cultural script that we may resist but can’t easily ignore. The mass-culture heroes of our time, in the Marvel universe or otherwise, might have their moments of sensitivity and humanizing vacillation, but most of them remain postmodern avatars of long-ago rugged individuals, riding out of town, headed for the hills, or disappearing into history as the smoke of battle clears away.

Their legacy has left us completely unprepared for the complex challenges now described as “existential” because they will decide our common fate. “All in this together” can no longer just apply to the people in your neighborhood or town, for as the panorama keeps widening to take in the entire planet, you and I recede until we seem to disappear among eight billion other human beings. Even the so-called World Wide Web often has a distancing effect, making the centers of authority feel more remote than ever. But here the dharma has a special role to play, because it discovered long ago that the experience of helplessness isn’t the problem we suppose it to be: rather, it’s our hidden common ground and the best hope for the future.

We need, though, to acknowledge from the start that Buddhists themselves have often suppressed this element of their tradition. The World Honored One’s awakening, after all, represents to his followers the pivot point of human history and the supreme achievement of sentient beings. Enjoying a state to which even gods aspire, the Buddha appears to personify everything that anyone might describe as charisma and power. His very name, Siddhartha, which can translate as “He Who Hits the Mark” or “The One Who Gets It Done,” was chosen for him by no less than a king, his father. According to the legend, and to drive the point home, a seer foretold that Siddhartha would become, if not the Buddha of the current age, then the logical second best, a planetary “wheel-turning monarch.” And, as befits a singular event of unsurpassed auspiciousness, the birth of the World Honored One was witnessed by the highest society—as high as the heavens, to be clear; or so we learn from a treasured biography of the One Who Liberates, the Lalitavistara Sutra:

Śakra, Brahmā, the Guardians of the World,
And many other gods stand joyously at [the Buddha’s mother’s side]
Adoring [her] with outstretched arms;
And the Lion of Men, his vows [made previously in Tusita Heaven] fulfilled
Emerges from the right side of his mother
Like a golden mountain;
The Guide of the World emerges in a brilliant light.
—trans. Gwendolyn Bays

While the sala trees burst into bloom, the infant Buddha plants his tiny feet on the surface of the earth. Then, taking seven steps, he declares, “I am the Leader of the World / I am the Guide of the World.”

The Lalitavistara is revered as the dharmic counterpart of the Gospel truth, yet the story makes it hard to imagine how the “Leader of the World” could have experienced anything like the helplessness we’ve known, not just in the COVID emergency but at many moments in recent years. It’s certainly true that once he’s grown, the Buddha leaves the palace and adopts the life of a wandering mendicant, begging for his food, sleeping rough, and clothed in whatever he can salvage from garbage dumps or funeral grounds. Pursuing liberation, he descends from high to low and from worldly power to debility. Indeed, he doesn’t undergo his awakening until his search carries him to the edge of death—helplessness at its most extreme. And we’re told that he might very well have died had he not received a meal of rice and milk from a village girl moved to compassion at the sight of so miserable a derelict, bare-boned, dirty, bleary-eyed. Only then, with his strength renewed, does he resume his vigil and break through.

Yet the sutra never permits us to forget that the Buddha—whom it names the “Conqueror”— remains coolly in control and self-assured. Not for a moment does he go through the wracking uncertainties that haunt us at night, when we worry about how to pay the bills, rescue Grandma from the nursing home, or make up the kids’ lost year of school. Even Mara, the tempter, stands no chance of success launching terrors and seductions to derail the imperturbable prince. To us, the future Buddha may look down and out, but he’s backstopped by cosmic guarantees. The sutra’s Siddhartha already knows that he’s destined to become the One Who Liberates, and he knows, as well, that his challenges actually conspire to ensure his success.

But the disappearance of cosmic guarantees is an essential feature of our lives. While I will attest from my own experience that meditation can take you to a place where, metaphorically, the heavens and the earth meet in your own body, I have to add “metaphorically” because that’s just not our reality now. Some may say that the gods have fled or that enchantment has vanished, while others blame science and secularity, but these explanations assume a deficit where we may also see an enormous gain. If we’ve lost confidence in a heaven looking down on Siddhartha while he sleeps, we’ve also become, in a thousand different ways, more aware of our terrestrial connectedness, along with its liberating possibilities. And in place of the cosmic guarantees that the Buddha in the sutra enjoys, we now have the opportunity to understand helplessness itself as a path to transcendence. It won’t be the transcendence of life’s contingencies, as though we could exist on another plane or shed our humanity, but transcendence through them.

We’re both limited and limitless, isolated and connected in a way the Lalitavistara ignores because its authors want to settle our minds by resolving the tension. In effect, they say to us, “Even if the Buddha’s serenity seems far away from you right now, it’s here and always will be.” This reminder may have the therapeutic effect of helping us forget our afflictions long enough to reach a place of genuine calm. Yet although we can appreciate the sutra’s approach as a form of skillful means, today it might have the very opposite result, making the Buddha’s wisdom appear more remote than ever. There is, though, an alternative to the Lalitavisatara’s strategy: instead of regarding our regret, loss, and abjection as illusions like those conjured up by the demon Mara, we could understand them instead as nothing other than the path. And in that case, our practice will assume a new form we may not yet recognize: accepting everything that happens to us as an opportunity for awakening—and, indeed, as awakening itself.

And this, I would say, is the practice taught by another sutra that enjoys a central place in Mahayana tradition—the Lotus, praised by the great Zhiyi, 6th-century founder of the Chinese Tiantai school, as the last and crowning achievement of the Buddha’s long teaching career. Scholars today have debunked this claim, not only because the sutra first appeared six or seven hundred years after the Buddha died but also because other sutras were composed in the centuries following the Lotus. And yet every time that I’ve returned to it when I’m in the throes of crisis, I’m persuaded once again that Zhiyi must be right in some higher sense. I’d argue that the Lotus Sutra manages to synthesize a deeply moving and humane honesty about the painful situation of the self with the Mahayana view that everything is interconnected. We only feel troubled by our helplessness, the Lotus maintains, because we haven’t become aware of our role in a greater drama.

To that drama the Lotus takes us almost right away, after it has set the scene and introduced the cast of characters. Standing before a throng of followers, the Buddha explains that he has come to reveal a teaching without precedent. In the past, people understood awakening as a special state far removed from the consciousness of women and men caught up in the whirl of everyday affairs. But now he announces a new dispensation. “All of you,” he declares, “will be able to achieve the Buddha way.” And this “all of you” includes everyone: those who won’t rise early to meditate because they don’t like getting out of bed, those lurking in the dark alleys of vice, and even those engaged in the worst of evil deeds. The Buddha affirms that he’ll see them through irrespective of their abilities, their karmic debts, and even their indifference to their own salvation.

The sutra also relates that some in the audience who have made every sacrifice—senior monks, nuns, and laypeople—simply can’t believe their ears. The new dispensation enrages them because it gives the first prize away to all contestants indiscriminately. But beyond that, it completely overturns their view of awakening as a personal accomplishment setting them apart from common ignorance. Because they’ve cordoned off their own minds, they’ve achieved an imperturbability that resembles the Buddha’s. But true enlightenment would let everything in— everything and everyone. Shaking their heads with an emphatic “No,” they rise together and depart.

Yet that’s not how everyone responds, especially, in a shocking turnaround, the bodhisattva Shariputra. Revered from the dharma’s early days as the most accomplished of the Buddha’s followers, he by rights should have been the first to leave. Instead, he can’t contain his happiness after he receives the news—and for a reason no one would suspect. He discloses his long struggle with a secret guilt arising from his failure to live up to Buddha’s high mark. He has observed each precept impeccably and even reached the stage that qualifies as “unsurpassed enlightenment.” Yet his attainment still feels incomplete, and he confesses to “doubts” and “regrets” that cause him to “to spend whole days and nights” in a vicious circle of self-blaming:

Having already freed myself of fault,
Hearing this, I am [now] also free from anxiety.
Whether in a mountain valley
Or under the trees in a forest,
Whether sitting or walking around,
I always thought about this matter
And blamed myself completely, thinking:
Why have I cheated myself so?
—trans. Gene Reeves

Whether or not we aspire to complete enlightenment or even imagine it is possible, every one of us harbors some regrets like those Shariputra voices here, and that’s why it may help to understand the nature of the promise the Buddha makes to him. The Buddha doesn’t say, as readers might expect, “Cheer up, Shariputra, you’re already there!” or “Awakening is just a breath away!” Instead, he affirms the very opposite: “Shariputra, in a future life, after innumerable, unlimited, and inconceivable eons, when you have served some ten million billion buddhas, maintained the true dharma, and perfected the way of bodhisattva practice, you will be able to become a buddha whose name is Flower Light Tathagata.” Complete enlightenment, in other words, lies a long way off.

At first we might find it hard to appreciate why this information would send a dejected Shariputra into ecstasies of joy, but the Buddha asks him, in effect, to stop thinking so obsessively about his personal defects and turn to the encompassing vastness. And if Shariputra shifts perspective this way, the Buddha feels confident that he’ll perceive there has never been such a thing as “individual enlightenment.” Enlightenment isn’t something you and I can earn like a black belt in karate or a Best Film Award; it’s a process, always unfolding everywhere, that involves us all. As the Lotus tries to show, the whole universe is working toward awakening, although its progress can be hard to discern because of the enormous scale and sweep of time required for all sentient beings to plug in—“innumerable, unlimited, and inconceivable eons.” But it’s going to happen, the Buddha maintains. Awakening is so intrinsic to consciousness that even our worst failures and misdeeds point us in the right direction. Sooner or later we’ll all figure it out, like Phil the weatherman in Groundhog Day, but multiplied by millions on millions.

Still, the obvious question raised by this reasoning, given the massive disproportion between the sutra’s portrait of a boundless universe and our little lives stuck in first gear, is how we could ever tell whether this might be true. If we can’t detect in some concrete way the grand motion of the cosmos across time and space, then the sutra is effectively as useless as we feel on our darkest days. Indeed, for many decades this was the view of the Japanese Zen master Hakuin, who more or less dismissed the Lotus as a pack of lies. But then, one evening as he sat on the meditation mat, the chirping of a cricket shifted his point of view and he had his Great Awakening. Now Hakuin understood that we rarely notice our connectedness because it’s absolutely everywhere, like the water invisible to fish since they never leave it. Yet we feel the connection at those moments when the universe, as it changes course, makes us bend to the pressure of its weight. We could describe this pressure as “helplessness,” and we often do. But we could also call it “an embrace,” the world encircling us in its arms and whispering, “Relax, you’re home.” Helplessness is just connection misunderstood. We only feel disconnected when we focus on the one embraced so narrowly that we forget the embracer.

On the other hand, there’s something very, very wrong with telling a person who just lost her job, has gotten deathly ill, or now sleeps in her car, “The universe is sending you big love.” The aspect of connectedness we shouldn’t overlook is that if we’re all really one, we can’t treat others people’s suffering solely as their responsibility. While the Lotus consoles us with assurances about our future buddhahood, it also puts us on the hook for the sad condition of the world today and everybody in it. That’s why the bodhisattva Guanyin, “Universal Regarder of the Cries of the World,” arrives at a culminating moment in the text. And when she does, the sutra tell us this:

If someone faced with immediate attack calls the name of [the Universal Regarder], the swords and the clubs of the attackers will instantly break into pieces and they will be freed from the danger. . . .
If any living beings are afflicted with a great deal of lust, let them keep in mind and revere [the Regarder] and they will be freed from their desire. If they have a great deal of anger and rage, [it will be the same]. . . .

Even if a woman wants to have a son and she worships and makes offerings to [the Regarder], she will bear a son blessed with merit, virtue, and wisdom. If she wants a daughter, she will bear [a female child] . . . who had long before planted roots of virtue and will come to be cherished and respected by all.
—trans. Reeves

Taken at face value, these claims aren’t true—unless you accept the possibility that the Regarder is who you are, as part of the “unlimited body” of all things. And in that case, you’re the only one who can make good on the bodhisattva’s words by offering the necessary help. Your efforts may fail, they may get rebuffed, or they could have unintended results, but by acting, all of us participate in the entire world’s enlightenment. Still, when we help others we don’t overcome our own fundamental helplessness. Instead, we see in the light of day that the giver is the one who most needs help, while those who accept what we offer them allow the Regarder in ourselves to emerge. Only the receiver can liberate us from our isolation.

Once we feel a rush of sympathy in response to others’ suffering and then take action to set things right, we may congratulate ourselves without understanding the deeper truth. Noble thoughts and emotions that we perceive as the best evidence of our initiative actually arise from a hidden place entirely beyond our control. We no more choose to act compassionately than we can consciously decide how we’ll feel 15 hours from now. I simply feel, I simply see, and compassion simply arrives, a gift from my buddhanature. I act, but I don’t initiate; I’m part of the effect but not the cause. True, when we meet the Regarder in ourselves, it can feel at first as though we’ve left behind for good the unfulfilled and needy Shariputra:

Listen to the actions of the Cry Regarder
How well [she] responds in every region [of the world],
[Her] great vow is deep as the sea
Unfathomable even within eons.
Serving many hundreds of billions of buddhas.

But only the Shariputra in ourselves will allow the Regarder to appear. Knowing that he won’t achieve buddhahood for a million lifetimes more, Shariputra has the patience to embrace every opportunity, large or small, as his bodhisattva work. And that means returning once again to the old self-doubts and uncertainties, now understood as aspects of the path.

Even though your head may start to spin when you try to think this matter through, the experience of disconnection, too, manifests our connectedness. One of my Zen teacher’s many teachers, the Kyoto School philosopher Shin’ichi Hisamatsu (1889–1980), used to illustrate this principle with a koan that I believe he composed in the years following World War II, as his country tried to extricate itself from a totalitarian disaster: “When you can do nothing, what will you do?” It’s a koan, though, that we’ll never quite resolve, because both parts of the statement express a reality that neither one can cancel out.

We’re always limited in countless ways by what Buddhist teaching represents as “causes and conditions” in the “three worlds of time.” Given these limitations, we’ll understandably dream of leaving our little lives behind by merging with that “unlimited body.” Then, as we might imagine, we can mobilize the power of the universe on our own behalf—the Buddhist equivalent, I suppose, of speaking for God. The Japanese viewed themselves in just this light when they invaded China, and so have Americans whenever they’ve believed in their Manifest Destiny. But such transformations from “man” into “God” are actually impossible, because the two have never been separate: we can’t become what we already are. Our helplessness is simply the universe itself when it’s acting small.

Pursuing liberation in our next life is also a way of being fully present now.

And so, tomorrow morning, at the sound of the alarm, we’ll jump into the shower and race for the train, coats flapping in the wind and socks slipping down. If the Zen master Pang Yun could see, he’d affirm that we’re radiating “supernatural power” when we “chop wood and carry water” in this modern urban way. But that makes it all sound too easy. Not the oneness, but the friction produced by great and small colliding—that’s what gradually enables us to purify “body, mind, and word,” cleaning up our karma in the process and becoming clearer.
As we do so, the Buddha promises, the Pure Land will reveal itself:

When the living witness the end of an eon,
When everything is consumed in a great fire,
This land of mine remains safe and tranquil,
Always filled with human and heavenly beings.

Its gardens and groves, halls and pavilions,
Are adorned with all kinds of gems.
Jeweled trees are full of flowers and fruit,
And living beings freely enjoy themselves.

As far as I’m concerned, these two stanzas say it all: the universe consumed by the kalpa fire and the Pure Land exist at the same time. I’ll admit that this claim seems to contradict the more familiar notion of the Pure Land as the realm of the Buddha of Infinite Light, Amitabha or Amida. According to the familiar view, we can go to Amitabha’s paradise only after we’ve left this life behind, and only then can we attain the enlightenment withheld from us by our circumstances here. But Zhiyi insists that both accounts are true: pursuing liberation in our next life is also a way of being fully present now.

I agree because I’ve come to think that the Pure Land—as symbol and experience—isn’t quite the same as our timeless, formless Buddha-mind. Nor is it our ordinary consciousness in the realm of change, where the burning never stops. Instead, the Pure Land lies at the interface between the crazy roller coaster of events and the stillness we sometimes reach. Our helplessness becomes transcendental, then, at those moments when nirvana appears right in the midst of samsara. Suddenly we find ourselves in the perfect Land where “living beings . . . enjoy themselves.” And even when we don’t, we’re almost there.

The post Helpless, Not Hopeless appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The cosmologist and science communicator Carl Sagan said something in his 1980 series Cosmos: A Personal Journey that really challenges the notion of anything being independent.

He said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the entire universe.” 

Let’s look at what this could mean. In the olden days, everybody made things from scratch. There were no boxed pie crusts or any of that yet. Then, in the 1930s and 1940s, someone industrious came up with the idea of making a pie crust mix. And then in the 1950s, cultural icon Betty Crocker really made that all prevalent. (She was a fictional character, but she seems very real.) But the question is, looking at the nature of interdependent relationships, is it even possible to make anything from scratch? Do you need an entire universe to make an apple pie? 

If you really want to make something from scratch—an apple pie—what would you have to do? You might buy a piece of land and get a piece of machinery—or at least a horse and a plow or something. And then you’ll have to get some seeds, fertilize the soil, and y set up an irrigation system.

Look at any one of these things, let’s say wheat. Where does the wheat come from? You’ll have to somehow acquire some seeds.

But you could take that even further. Where do these seeds come from? What is the origin of wheat? If you look it up, you might find that wheat originated, they think, in the Levant region of the Middle East, of the Near East, in about 7,500 BCE.

And if you wanted to really explore wheat, you’d have all kinds of adventures and interesting things to learn. Then, when you think of grinding the wheat, what kind of machinery would you need? And what would that machinery be made of? Would it be made out of metal? Perhaps you’d need to put fuel into that machine. Think about fuel and the politics of getting fuel for your tractor and your machinery. 

Then it begins to spread out and connect to so many different causes and conditions—infinite, really, because you’ll also have to look into the lineage of the people who actually manufacture the wheat, plant it, and harvest it, and consider their sustenance and their connection to everything else. That’s just the wheat that we’re talking about. We haven’t even gotten to the apples yet! 

When I first heard this quote, I thought, I’m going to make an apple pie. It was August and I actually had some apples on my tree, and my dad’s birthday was coming up. My friend Peggy Markel, who teaches cooking in many different places in the world, said she’d come over and teach me how to make one. But first, I was going to harvest my apples. The night before she came, however, a bear came and ravaged every single apple off my tree except for one little tiny apple that was dangling on the top.

So I thought the universe was conspiring against me. But I didn’t make such a big deal about it. I went to the store and bought some local apples. When Peggy got to my house, we made apple pies all day long. We made seven different kinds. When we were done, I thought, which one should I give to my dad? There was this really traditional one with these little leaves made out of dough on the top, and I felt so proud about it for a minute, until I realized, who am I to take the credit for this?

It doesn’t work that there’s one person with one idea, one recipe, one bag of apples, and one pie. Things don’t work in a linear way. In fact, my ability to make an apple pie was dependent on infinite causes and conditions. And so it made me think, wow, this is not really just about dessert. This is about who we are in the nature of dependent relationships. Who we are as citizens of the great nature of infinite contingency—the nature of pratityasamutpada. I think this whole contemplation really helps you understand who you are.

 So I started to think, we can’t say we’re so all important because we’re part of this bigger system. So we can’t really get bloated about our accomplishments. At the same time, we can’t say we’re insignificant either because we are part of the nature of infinite contingencies, and everything we do has reverberating effects. 

This is a very sensitive system, and we are citizens of this system of contingencies. So we’re not really big—we can’t be. We’re not so important. And yet we’re not insignificant.

Can you really say who you are, because things are multidimensional and it all depends? We are part of this bigger system. This gives us a lot of information about how to move about the world—and we’re not separate from it.

So think about interdependence in this context, and let it help you put things into perspective and really look at how amazing everything in your world is because an apple pie is not a singular, separate phenomena, but part of everything else.

The post Do You Need an Entire Universe to Make an Apple Pie? appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I

“In an instant of awareness,
Infinite buddhas,
Simultaneous shining
Everywhere interrelated:

“A vast humming
. . . . the ocean of buddhas;
. . . the mind of enlightenment. . . .
harmonies
heard beyond hearing

“Waves of delirium
Absorbing all distinctions.”
–Avatamsaka [“Flower Ornament”] Sutra

II
Night Rain at Kuang-k’ou

The river is clear and calm;
a fast rain falls in the gorge.
At midnight the cold, splashing sound begins,
like thousands of pearls spilling onto a glass plate,
each drop penetrating the bone.

In my dream I scratch my head and get up to listen.
I listen and listen, until the dawn.
All my life I have heard rain,
and I am an old man;
but now for the first time I understand
the sound of spring rain
on the river at night.
–Yang Wan-Li, trans. Jonathan Chaves

Nine hundred years ago, Yang dreamed he woke as a storm broke around him on the river where his boat was anchored. But whether he was dreaming or awake, he listened, and a new understanding of rain came to him. Now, miraculously, beyond such concepts as awake or dream, now or then, Yang gives us the presence of that moment again, and, with it, a shared sense of being not constrained by space and time.

III

The vector of finding or grasping
or attaining or knowing;
This is a core of movement we
cannot imagine absent:
This gives us the sense of what is
next or falling away or lost or
unattainable.

A desire, a fear divides a world
A focus divides a mind,
A purpose creates our refuse,

In the surrounding moment,
A world, a range of things sensed
or to be sensed:
Horizons shimmer.

We expand and contract.

A student took the renowned Tibetan teacher Rabjam Rinpoche to hear a concert of Western classical symphonic music. At the end, Rinpoche asked: “Do you listen to this music horizontally or vertically?”

IV

“Gerald de Barri, a Welsh churchman and historian who wrote under the name Giraldus Cambrensis, made a famous description of his peasant countrymen’s communal singing in a volume completed in 1194:

‘They sing their tunes not in unison, but in parts with many simultaneous modes and phrases. Therefore, in a group of singers you will hear as many melodies as there you will see heads, yet they all accord in one consonant and properly constituted composition.’”

In Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century: The Oxford History of Western Music, from which this passage is taken, the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin later remarked: “The chief distinguishing characteristics of any contrapuntal or harmonic style, including those used today, come down to two: the ways in which voices move with respect to one another . . . , and the ways in which dissonance functions vis-à-vis consonance.”

The 20th-century Russian philosopher and critic Mikhail Bakhtin, in a celebrated study of Dostoevsky, described literary polyphony as a genre in which “the voices remain independent and as such are combined in a unity of a higher order. [Thus] a combination of several individual wills takes place, [so] that the boundaries of the individual will can be in principle transcended.”

Western music is uniquely reliant on written scores, but this situation has made possible the extensive development of highly complex polyphonic music. And so, though Bach, Beethoven, and many others were renowned for their skill at improvisation, we have also a tradition that continually finds new life in complex written sound structures. Even simply as members of the audience, we do not listen just for a melody or a rhythm; we strive to hear all the notes, all the rhythms, all the balances and dynamics within an evolving aural architecture that arises and vanishes in time.

(Why must spiritual practice so often focus on purifying or enriching a single strand, cultivate a single reference point, a single point of focus, a single vector? Why acceptance or rejection, pure or impure, yes or no?)

Sitting in one place, let us attend to the full extent of all that is given in this moment.

Trungpa Rinpoche said: The teacher is the exemplar of the phenomenal world; then, the phenomenal world is the teacher.

Outside one voice.
Inside one journey:
Innumerable strands,
Innumerable beings
Soundwaves moving shimmering.

V

Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World is an extraordinary, complex, and beautifully written book that focuses on matsutake mushrooms. This fungus, cherished and prized by Japanese and Koreans because its scent evokes the sadness of the end of autumn, grows only in devastated landscapes, particularly in the loggedover forests of Oregon. There they are harvested commercially by US Army vets, former Thai soldiers, and Cambodian refugees, as well as old Japanese people for whom the mushroom hunting brings back the folkways that were demolished when their families were put into concentration camps here. The book’s subtitle is On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins.

Dr. Tsing writes of the complex biologies, histories, economies, and ecologies that intertwine in the matsutake mushrooms’ life, environment, value, harvesting.

As she says:

Many histories come together here: they draw us beyond bubble worlds into shifting cascades of collaboration and complexity. . . . Rather than limiting our analyses to one creature at a time (including humans), or even one relationship, if we want to know what makes places livable we should be studying the polyphonic assemblages, gatherings of ways of being. Assemblages are performances of livability.

The Avatamsaka Sutra says:

Upon true awakening,
Buddhas see within their body
All sentient beings attaining true
awakening . . .
The bodhisattva Samantabhadra
commented,
“Very good—it is as you say.”

The Canadian anthropologist Eduardo Kohn has written about how forests can be said to “think,” since within the jungle, the interplay of phenomena from the atmospheric, geological, biological, animal, and human realms are continually influencing each other and in this way produce a multiplicity of continuously unfolding meanings of these phenomena. Thus the forest is recognizably a mind, if not an exclusively human one. That is to say, its shifting forms of organization and awareness are not exclusively devoted to human purposes.

“Selves,” Kohn says, referring to human and nonhuman beings in his study of the Runa of the upper Amazon, “exist simultaneously as embodied and beyond the body. They are localized, and yet they exceed the individual and even the human.”

And elsewhere he writes:

“This spirit realm that emerges from the life of the forest as a product of a whole host of relations that cross species lines and temporal epochs is a zone of continuity and possibility. Survival depends on many kinds of deaths that this spirit realm holds in its configuration and that make a living future possible.”

So there is infinite unfolding of music in innumerable simultaneous dimensions. You are a sound in it and the space of it.

Each tone moves through time with its qualities: pitch, shifting dynamics, evolving colors, altering relationship with pitches before, after, above, below, near or far, and/or simultaneously. By the shift of relationship, each pitch is heard differently, and the spatial environment changes.

No pitch has its own unique history or fate. There is only the simultaneous and evolving multiplicity.

Polyphony is not the project of an individual sound.

VI

The natural expanse,
Free from seeking, cultivation,
definitions

Receives the awakened state
As a mountain receives the light of
the sun, moon, and stars,
Receives blankets of snows,
Receives torrents of rain from
clouds,
Receives the lifecycles of insects,
worms, germs, birds, foxes,
wolves, beetles,
Receives cold winds, spring breezes
in oak, cedar, pine, maple, brushwood,
Receives cascades of melting water, Receives avalanches of rocks
Receives fire
Receives hunters, pilgrims,
merchants, lovers on the run.

VII

It has begun, almost without being
noticed,
It seems sudden:
Time, so laboriously expended,
Vanishes.
A day is gone.

And somehow, effort was expended
to no end.
The sought-for transformation
vanishes.
And so, at the end—evening:

What is being called “I” changes
and doesn’t.
The world surrounding moves
beyond its own
thunderstorm; stop; sunburst, stop;
light rain and the dense smell of
green and trees,

Sounds of waking women, men,
Scents of soap, of burning wood,
coffee:
The unsought passage.
Bells, pigeons clattering in flight,
Dream and awake
Wave on wave:
Unending and unbegun
Weaving
Music

VIII

At the back of the skull Tonight I
knew of the House
That lodged the living muscle that
clung to the starlight
–Alfred Starr Hamilton

 

In memory of Peter Serkin

The post To Music appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The word sangha means to “bring together” into a group and is the general word for “community” in both Pali and Sanskrit. It can refer to a flock of crows or a herd of deer, but in Buddhist literature it is primarily used to refer to the Buddhist community.

Most often sangha refers to the formal community of monks and nuns, and as such it is often capitalized in English usage. This is especially the case when it is listed as part of the “triple gem”: the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha (the Awakened One, his Teaching, and his Community).

Traditionally one joins the Sangha by a formal act of renouncing all possessions and worldly relationships, and then “goes forth” into the homeless life of a monk or nun. This is when one shaves the head, puts on the robes of a mendicant, and lives only on freely offered food. In the early days this was normally a lifetime commitment, but today ordination can be temporary. Sangha members in ancient India gathered together as a community twice a month, on the days of the full and new moon, at which point they would recite the memorized discourses together. They would also admit openly to any transgressions of the monastic rules (227 for the monks, 331 for the nuns).

The early Buddhist community was actually composed of four parts, with the addition of a community of lay followers (literally, those who hear the teachings) divided into male and female adherents. The Buddha is often depicted as teaching the “fourfold assembly,” surrounded by monks, nuns, and male and female lay followers. One would formally join the lay community by chanting “I go for refuge to the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha” three times.

More recently the word sangha has been extended even wider in the West to include almost anyone with an interest in Buddhist thought and practice. Local temples and retreat centers refer to their participants as sangha members, and people look to join meditation communities or affinity groups that self-identify as sanghas.

Finally, the word can be extended to encompass all sentient beings—and even all inhabitants of a unified ecosystem—as members of a single sangha. This inspiring vision brings with it a heightened sense of connection, a greater appreciation of mutual interdependence, and a shared responsibility for all beings to respect and care for one another.

The post What’s in a Word? Sangha appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Artist and Buddhist teacher Losang Samten was born in Tibet in 1953. In 1959, following Communist China’s occupation of Tibet, his family fled to Nepal. They eventually resettled in India, where Samten later entered Namgyal monastery. After receiving the degree of geshe in 1985, he served as personal attendant to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama before moving to New York City in 1988. He has been making sand mandalas at institutions across the United States for more than 30 years. In March, Anne Doran and Tricycle contributing editor Frank Olinsky sat down with him to talk about his work.

When did you learn to make sand mandalas? In 1969, I was one of a group of young monks selected to train in traditional Tibetan religious rituals at Namgyal Monastery, His Holiness’s monastery in Dharamsala, India. The older generation was dying, and there was an urgency around preserving the culture. We were taught ritual dance, ritual music, butter sculpture making—everything. And for four summers starting around 1970, some of us learned to make sand mandalas.

How did you end up making sand mandalas in America? In the late 1980s, Barry Bryant, who was then director of the Samaya Foundation [an organization dedicated to educating people about Tibetan culture], asked His Holiness about having a sand mandala made at the foundation’s center in downtown Manhattan. Up until then, sand mandalas were constructed only for religious ceremonies, like the Kalachakra empowerments His Holiness gave in India. So for a while, His Holiness couldn’t decide what to say. Finally, he agreed to send one monk over. He asked me if I wanted to go and I said yes. I came to New York in February 1988 and made a Guhyasamaja [a tantric deity] sand mandala at Barry’s foundation.

Later that year, Malcolm Arth, the head of the American Museum of Natural History’s education department, asked me to make a mandala for the museum. It was the first time a mandala would ever be produced for public view in the United States.

Related: Tantric Art: Maps of Enlightenment

It was a Kalachakra [a system of Tantric teachings] mandala, right? Right. People could come and watch it being made. I worked on it every day for six weeks, and viewers could ask me questions. We had 50,000 visitors.

His Holiness told me he thought I should stay longer in America. So I stayed and kept making mandalas, sometimes by myself, sometimes with other monks. We’d make Kalachakra mandalas, mandalas of compassion, all of that. But always, in the back of my mind, I’d be thinking that they were very complicated to explain.

Generally speaking, you’re not supposed to share the Kalachakra mandala unless the viewer has had the correct ritual empowerment. Even now, some of the more sensitive monks and nuns believe it’s bad to give those teachings in public. I wondered what might be a mandala that people could relate to, and I thought, the Wheel of Life, because it has all the basic tenets of Buddhism contained within it.

The Wheel of Life is not a traditional sand mandala motif, though. Right. It’s a very ancient motif, but always for thangkas [Tibetan scroll paintings], never for sand.

So there was no precedent for it. No, there was no model for it. I’d never done a Wheel of Life sand mandala. But I’d been thinking about doing one. And then, in 1998, I got an invitation from the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno.

Perfect. The roulette wheel of life. I asked His Holiness if it was OK to make a Wheel of Life in sand, even though it wasn’t a traditional design. He thought it was a perfect way to introduce people to Buddhism. Since then I’ve done it in many places.

Do you talk about the imagery with viewers as you create the mandalas? Absolutely. The whole idea is to have a conversation. At the center of the Wheel of Life are the three poisons: attachment (or greed), anger, and ignorance, symbolized by the rooster, the snake, and the pig, respectively. When I make a Wheel of Life, I’ll talk about the four noble truths—suffering, the causes of suffering, the end of suffering, and the path to the end of suffering. And I’ll talk about how suffering is caused by greed, anger, and ignorance. Not one person has ever said to me, “That isn’t true.” It makes perfect sense to everybody, Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike.

And what about the other elements in the mandala? The animals at the center are surrounded by the six realms of existence, and the six realms are surrounded by the twelve dependent originations, right? Right. So then we talk about the law of karma and about interdependence.

“I’ll talk about how suffering is caused by greed, anger, and ignorance. Not one person has ever said to me, ‘That isn’t true.'”

Even though the Wheel of Life is not typically made in sand, it’s still a traditional image. Within that traditional structure, though, you get pretty imaginative. Is that where you get to be an artist? Exactly. A Kalachakra mandala in New York, a Kalachakra mandala in Los Angeles, and a Kalachakra mandala in Chicago are all pretty much the same. But a Wheel of Life mandala in Reno, a Wheel of Life mandala in Philadelphia, a Wheel of Life mandala in New York—each one I make a little differently. For instance, when I made a Wheel of Life for the Philadelphia Cathedral, I put the cathedral in it. And where traditionally the six realms each have an image of the Buddha, I put in Jesus. That doesn’t go against any Buddhist tradition at all.

As a master of ritual dance—which you also studied in Tibet—do you find adapting traditional teachings to Western audiences a kind of dance in itself? My audiences are incredibly varied. Many people who come to see my mandalas have never heard of Tibet or of Buddhism, but they do understand what’s gone wrong in their lives as a result of anger, ignorance, or greed. So there’s always a chance to communicate. At first, some people aren’t comfortable asking questions. But they come back the next day, and the next, and then they will ask me to tell them more.

Related: The Moving Mandala: Inside Bhutan’s Sacred Dance Festivals

I imagine when you dismantle the mandala, people often ask how you can destroy something so beautiful. Yes. So I make a dance with them. On the first day, someone asks me to tell them more. On the second or third day, they might ask how I’m going to preserve it, and I’ll say, “Well, next Friday we are going to dismantle it.” And they’ll be shocked. That’s when I, or one of the other ritual artists, will talk about impermanence.

Do you think there’s a particular reason why the Wheel of Life, with its lesson in interdependence, is so important right now? Absolutely. The illusion that we are not interdependent is really the cause of most of our problems today. In the last year or so, I’ve been watching more news than at any other time in my life. I say to myself, “I will only watch this much and then go do my prayers,” but then I have to keep watching.

But I also tell myself that I have to participate. I’m living in this time and in this place. In Tibet, we lost our country because we didn’t pay attention to what was happening. And it matters what happens in the United States. This country is very important for many people in the world. Even though they had to leave their home in 1959, my parents felt that all was not lost. Why? Because America was still there. In 1963, when JFK was assassinated, I remember Tibetans were so disturbed by the news. Even now people look to America for hope. And so, if America falls apart, who do they look to? I tell my younger students, “You need to pay attention to what is going on. You should never think that you can’t make a difference in this world. You can. That is very, very important to understand.”

The post The Mandala Master appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

The truth of interdependence is as central to the dharma as the Four Noble Truths, emptiness, and impermanence. We can contemplate interdependence on the cushion and say, “Yes, of course!” to ourselves, but how often do we pause and reflect when relative examples of it appear right before our eyes in daily life?

I’ve been honored to have served five terms in the New Hampshire legislature, four of them on the Science, Technology, and Energy Committee. Looking back over the years, there have been several experiences in this political environment that served as metaphors for interdependence.

Most strikingly were the visits my committee made each biennium to the high-security compound of ISO New England, the independent system operator of the electric grid for six New England states. At each visit, the big reveal would happen in a long conference room with one wall fully curtained. At some point our host would draw the curtain, exposing a full-width, tall window looking out at a giant electronic version of the grid on a wall across from us, with operators at computer stations visible on the floor below minding the system. The “wow” factor got me every time. (To appreciate a metaphor for our daily interdependence, watch ISO’s five-minute film, “Staying a Step Ahead.”) Grid operators are the conductors, orchestrating a finely tuned system that allows you to turn on your lights, your heat, and charge your gadgets at will. This is a system of interdependent factors, ultimately including various types of energy generation, transmission, local distribution (by your utility), and careful planning and monitoring to provide reliable electricity 24/7.

It may not be a stretch to intellectually agree with the Buddha’s teaching that we’re all connected. It may be harder for someone to realize the truth that all phenomena depend on the existence of everything else, i.e., causes and conditions. In other words, if this, then that. The screen you are reading this on requires the whole electrical grid, the whole society, and even the whole of the physical world to exist. While it’s one thing to observe this truth, it’s another to remain mindful of it. The various components of the electric grid working together seamlessly is a powerful illustration and a constant reminder of how interdependence operates in the world.  

This is also true in any political endeavor, whether a local effort to keep a town library funded or at the national level to pass a federal bill—or even at work, when you need team support for a new idea. Interdependence is always at the forefront. In these situations, the larger metaphysical truth becomes apparent in some very pragmatic ways. There are opportunities for building coalitions and fostering cooperation.

Each year as a legislator, I could file or co-sponsor bills. Among the most gratifying was a 2007 environmental initiative, the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), which demands an increasing percentage of New Hampshire’s energy come from qualified renewable sources. As the bill’s prime sponsor, I helped build a coalition of stakeholders to participate in multiple meetings. The goal was to reach enough of an agreement on the bill’s language to get it passed with minimal opposition and sent to the governor for signature.

Similar to the broader environmental movement in America, with so many niche interests, we had to corral lobbyists, corporate and environmental organization representatives, all the utilities in the state, economists, and our Department of Environmental Services to discuss the mechanics of the program and its benefits for New Hampshire. Not all these players even wanted an RPS bill—and some would lose something because of it—but the majority of folks in the legislature and the governor did. So there had to be some kind of win for everyone. We all had to depend on each other not only to get the bill passed but also to make it work afterwards. So far, despite annual legislative attacks, the law is still helping to grow clean-energy industries in our state and lessen our dependence on fossil fuels.

Coalitions in politics are a prime example of how interdependence works on the practical level. Advocating against the death penalty, for example, needs multiple voices, such as clergy, physicians, lawyers, law enforcement, and families. Advocating for medical marijuana needs patients, physicians, hospice workers, families, and even entrepreneurs.

When it comes to my state’s budgeting process, the array of stakeholders who testify at finance meetings is always diverse and often compelling. With the legislature holding the purse strings, the dollars assigned to social safety net issues depend on how legislators read the desires of their constituents. Are testimonies and emails from the public sounding more tight-fisted or generous with the finite bucket of dollars? And how loud are the various lobbyists? Every parent of an autistic child, every teacher working with special-needs kids, every jobless head of household, every person struggling to avoid homelessness, and every family saving tuition money for our state university is dependent on how the treasury pie is sliced in the budget.

The system (government taking money in and apportioning money out) is rarely acknowledged as interdependent. For people who operate on an “I, Me, Mine” mindset and not a “We” mindset, it’s difficult to perceive the interdependence that pervades everything. But when, for instance, more people have access to health care and make a livable wage, society at large is better off. As commitment to my practice has deepened, the phrase “for the benefit of all” has become my moral compass, inspiring me to dig in and rededicate my practice (on and off the cushion) daily.

Perhaps the metaphor for interdependence most crucial to humans today is our environment. Without getting too wonky, there are climate feedback systems that loop on themselves, interdependently causing the planet to warm and our ecosystems to be dramatically altered. We humans are not blameless.

Each generation is affected by the actions of previous ones. We can choose to be good ancestors for future generations or not. Given the climate data we now have, non-action is no longer a choice. Recently Tricycle published an article by Bhikkhu Bodhi, “A Call to Conscience,” in which he urged Buddhists, “It’s crucial for us to enter the sphere of action.” It has been a great privilege for me to have entered this sphere, serve at the state level, and to have had the opportunity to make a difference in a few issues, especially in the growth of clean energy.

One question Buddhists might include in contemplation on interdependence is, “On this now fragile, interdependent system called Mother Earth, whose health status affects all of us, what should I be doing? How can I be of benefit?”

The post Interdependence in the Statehouse appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.