Retreat Reflections: In the Garden of Awakening

It was lovely walking to work this morning and smelling the clean, fresh air which had been cleansed by yesterday’s heavy downpours. Actually I sat at work yesterday bitching about the weather with everyone else but when I got home my cat and I went out in the garden and stood under an umbrella enjoying the noise of plump raindrops exploding on the canvass overhead. And even as I relished the garden, the sound recalled memories of wandering around Hōryūji in Nara towards the end of my pilgrimage to Japan.

Many Buddhists in the West speak of ‘being completely in the present moment’ but I think we can get a false notion that it means living with no past or future consciousness. What it really means though is not letting our mind take us away from facing and dealing with what is here right now. There is no reason why past and future can’t flow into and inform the present so long as this is where we take our stand. My recollections of a wet day at Hōryūji certainly helped me to witness and be grateful for the sacred right there outside my backdoor.

Anyway to get back to what I actually meant to write about …

This weekend past we held our first ever formal retreat at our dojo. I had quite a lot of responsibility for organising it and slept terribly in the lead up. As most of you know retreats have been part of Dharma training since Sakyamuni’s time and so I was very aware of the great trust our head temple was putting in us to approach it with the right attitude of sincerity and devotion.

As it turned out I needn’t have worried too much. Almost as soon as people arrived I found that they got straight into the right frame of mind; taking their training seriously and helping out naturally and freely wherever it was needed. The great burden of responsibility that I had felt suddenly became very light and melted into that special joy which is found in work shared amongst friends. Later, on the first evening during a lesson in Jodo Shinshu rituals and chanting, one of the priests, Rev. KHI, said that (roughly paraphrased); “When we show respect to the Buddha with our thoughts, words and action the Other-power comes forth naturally.” I knew then very clearly what he was describing.

Next day during his key-note Dharma talk Rev. KTS spoke of his recognition on one occasion of “some purifying power at work within the community [at our head temple] that enabled everybody to develop and grow in mutual respect and love.” This made me recall my own experience of visiting there, at a time when my mind was in a very poor condition, and how the Buddha’s Other-power, working through the sangha’s devotions and efforts, naturally helped to awaken my mind to see other people as they really are for a little while.

In turn this made two statements from Sensei’s talk leap out at me. Firstly that, “In Buddhism, one particular person and other people, or if you like, you and I are ‘not one and yet not two’ (fuitsu-funi) in greater oneness” and secondly that, “[In the samgha] those who have solved their problems once before know the way to finding a solution and repeatedly return to this path.” These comments made me think of my long friendship with Jishin and all the problems and happiness we have shared. There were times when we fell out severely and no effort of our own could solve our disagreement. However because we both continued to take refuge in the Three Treasures, despite our poisoned minds, the water of Dharma flowed out naturally and washed away our differences. Namuamidabutsu.

In my daily life outside of the dojo my mind often becomes cynical and hard because I don’t want to add other peoples’ suffering to my own. However during our retreat I learned that if I face the Buddha with sincerity then the suffering of my self and others is transformed into shared peace and joy. In addition, as awareness of my selfishness flooded into my mind I realised that even repentance (sange) comes from the side of the Buddha - and that is why true repentance is not in contradiction with Amida’s unconditional embrace.

Another revelation of the weekend came through the struggles of a Dharma friend who had come on the retreat with many personal difficulties weighing on his mind. I don’t know that he found any answers or resolution to his problems but I did watch his mind become gradually calmer and more stable. This reminded me of the fact that Pure Land Buddhism, like the traditions in the Path of Sages, also includes samatha and vipashyana. Thinking of him I feel my self yearn for the moment that his calmness allows the Buddha’s vipashyana to illuminate his condition (See note at this link). Is this yearning for another’s well-being a kind of prayer I wonder? I’ve always struggled to reconcile prayer with our tradition but perhaps this is a glimpse of something. I guess prayer for me is entrusting others to the working of the Vow; thus it is inseparable from faith.

The retreat felt like the sowing and watering of a garden by many hands. Some flowers and fruits have already appeared but so much remains to be revealed and discovered, harvested and celebrated with thanks to all. Meanwhile I take sustenance from two fragrant blooms; the lessons of how showing sincere respect to the Buddha-dharma, and deeply hearing the Other / others allow the Other-power to come forth without calculation or self-consciousness –regardless of one’s limitations or defilements. Namuamidabutsu.

 

True Religion

Here’s another quote from my weekend reading (compare Tannisho 8):

True religion has no answers for our self-seeking demands. Instead, it shows us the way beyond the suffering and affliction caused by those very demands. It is not until one understands this that religion can provide the answer to our innermost yearning.*“

(Takashi Hirose - Lectures on Shin Buddhism, Higashi Honganji 1980, p.28)

*(Sk. Purva-pranidhana; Jpn. hongan)

 

Falling and Arising

For various reasons I ended last week carrying around a lot of anger and frustration, and feeling quite unhappy. I think that, as I have been engaged in a lot of Dharma study and discussion recently, I fell into yearning for a pure space to step into where I could construct some kind of illusory theoretical foundation for myself to wield as a talisman against life’s dukhka. Consequently I was going around getting riled up by people who impinged on that fragile, mentally-constructed mandala.

As it was, on Saturday morning, I stepped out of my house to go to the shops and promptly slipped on some black ice; falling flat on my back and wrenching my knee. Picking myself up off the road the thought, “Who are you going to blame for this?” popped into my head. Immediately it was like a bubble bursting. In the end the actions of all the people that annoyed me in the week had been just as impersonal as the patch of ice and just as outside of my control.

I was interested recently to read in Dzongar Jamyang Khyentse’s What makes you not a Buddhist that:

[In everyday language] Tibetans use the words rangwang and shenwang to represent “happiness” and “unhappiness” … rang means “self” and wang means “power”, “rights,” or entitlement,” while shen means “other”. (p.52)

Of course the Buddha taught us that everything changes and thus happiness of this kind is not only fleeting but turns to suffering. The Stoics solution to this problem was to try and see some kind of Providence in Other-power / shenwang and thus experience it, if not happily, at least with equanimity. There are various merits and problems inherent in such an approach but I think the main flaw from a Dharmic point of view is that it is too objective and eschatological. Substituting an objective belief in self-power for one in other-power is just switching from egotism to fatalism.

In Buddhism the corollary to all compounded things are impermanent is that all compounded things have no inherent existence. In other words entrusting or faith in Buddhism is to enter into a dynamic, liberating relationship in which self and other continuously illuminate one anothers’ contingent natures. Further more the fact that this takes place in real time, rather than an abstract or eschatological conception of time, means that it works against the encrustation and petrification of thought and feeling - and gives us faith in the Other that is beyond self and other; Nirvana.

Nature is what will destroy us, but nature is also what allows us the possibility of waking up. We have Buddha-nature and Mara-nature, at any moment we have the capacity to open up or close down. It’s the same with this world in which we’re embedded; it’s both good and bad, it’s not reducible to either good or bad. The habit of making the split, cutting off from nature, is part of our suffering.’
- Stephen Batchelor (Dharmalife, Issue 25)

To practice by pushing ahead, meeting the numberless experiences as a self and witnessing them thus, is delusion. When the vast expanse of experiences move forward and practice and realize the self, this is Awakening.
- Dogen Zenji (Genjokoan)

Grey clouds flow towards the horizon, running before a cold wind that rattles the branches of the pollarded trees like skeletal fingers. A new week approaches, and already, constantly, a new self, new other … new being-time.