A splendid branch issues forth from the old plum tree.
Thorns come forth at the same time. -Keizan-Zenji, Transmission of the Light This poem is an early example of the Japanese Zen aesthetic of Wabi Sabi. Wabi Sabi has three primary features or virtues: imperfection & irregularity; age; simplicity & naturalness. We find them all manifested in pottery, brush painting, tea ceremony, poetry, as well as the lives of Zen adepts. Today, I will go into imperfection. All life has imperfections. Regardless of how good we are at meditation, there are times when our fear or anger get the best of us. Buddhist mythology refers to six psycho-spiritual realms, including a hell realm. We all enter this lowest realm at times where our sense of flawedness prevails. Supposedly the guardian spirit, Jizo Bodhisattva travels between the hell realms acting as a guardian and guide. When someone reaches out skillfully to us when we are in a Hell Realm, that person is manifesting his Jizo power. On a few occasions I watched my Zen teacher manifest this power. One morning a small group of us including Suzuki, were getting set to go to a lecture at an art museum in San Francisco. At the last minute my roommate, Ruth, who I shared a duplex with, across the street from the Zen center, decided not to come even though she had been very enthused the night before. Ruth had fallen into a deep trough with her depression and had not attended group meditation for some time. When we got to the museum, we sat down in the auditorium to hear the talk, but, mysteriously, Suzuki disappeared, so that he missed the entire talk. When we left the theater, there he was exiting the gift shop. “Sensei,” I exclaimed, “Where we you during the talk?” “Buying a card for Ruth,” he replied quietly. He must have given it to her shortly after we came home because I saw it on the coffee table in our duplex. I said something to her about the card and she exclaimed, “What a man Sensei is, he accepts me, warts and all.” This is a great example of Wabi Sabi. And soon Ruth began meditating with us again. When we’re in a Hell Realm it’s hard for us to reach out to others because we often feel drained and exhausted with a sense of hopelessness. But with a little support, change is always possible. Instead of trying to be perfect or pretending, can we embrace our vulnerability, our flawedness? Here’s a second story about my first teacher. He had been asked to speak at Stanford University where I was a student. I knew he was a little nervous about this. His English was quite broken and he commented that he didn’t like to speak to people who were not meditation practitioners. But he agreed. And there I was sitting in the front row of the auditorium next to him. As he was being introduced, he whispered to me, “I scared,” gently grasping my hand. Then he got up and gave his talk in a relaxed and engaged manner. His ability to be quietly transparent with me seemed to help him let go and engage fully. Each of us is flawed because life has wounded us. When we open up to our wounds/flaws, we have the capacity to move beyond being crippled by them. Sometimes our flaws become a catalyst for opening up to new opportunities. An example was my friend, Al. Al had two adult children commit suicide. As he sat in meditation each morning, he experienced wave after wave of anger, guilt, and sadness. As he simply allowed his emotions to course through him in a non-judgmental way, without repression or judgment, he used the energy from his pain to pour himself into developing a Suicide Awareness service which is now helping family members throughout the country help folks who are suicidal and help loved ones who have lost a family member or friend to suicide. Sometimes our opening up to our flaws includes reaching out to others for support in a way we wouldn’t normally risk doing. We realize that others are flawed in similar ways to us and develop bonds, which can be deep and long lasting. What better example of this is there than the tremendous success of Twelve Step groups during the past thirty years? Suzuki commented once, “To appreciate our human life is as rare as soil on your nail.” When we can just look at the flaw without projecting anything on it, we may find ourselves embracing it and even appreciating its irregular and quirky beauty. The dirt on our fingernail shows our engagement, our involvement in life beyond any idea of perfection. As Madonna sings, “Just take me with all my stupid flaws. I’ll never be as perfect as you want me to be. Take me, with all of my beautiful scars. I won’t apologize for being myself. I love you the way that you are . . . Don’t judge me, although I’m incomplete. My imperfections make me unique. That’s my belief. I come to you with all my flaws. With all of my beautiful scars.” What a wonderful antidote to shame. We can begin to feel connected to our core self and to others on a visceral level. We can discover beauty right in the heart of our broken parts; hold it, and even cherish it, the opposite of the inner tyrant’s blood sport: “find the dysfunction — and pulverize it.” I will close with a Zen story followed by a quote from Leonard Cohen. One day some people came to the master and asked ‘How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence? The master held up a glass and said, “Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it and it rings! One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. And I say, ‘Of course.’ When I understand that the glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious.” “Forget your perfect offering. There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. This crack is where lasting love takes root.” -Leonard Cohen A splendid branch issues forth from the old plum tree. Thorns come forth at the same time. I ended my last post about the first chapter of Transmission of Light with this statement from the 14th century Zen teacher, Keizan:
“Truthfully, your skin, flesh, bones, and marrow are totally ‘and.’ The host inside the house is ‘I.’ It has nothing to do with skin, flesh, bones, and marrow.” Now he reverses himself, in typical Zen fashion. He is warning us not to get attached to any concepts, even supposedly sacred ones. He does this by alluding to an interchange, which Bodhidharma had with his senior students. At the end of this interchange he praised Hui Ko as his best student, the only one to get the marrow of his teaching. Keizan is reminding us that as soon as we single out someone or something as being best, we create problems. My root teacher, Suzuki Roshi, refers to this here: If you think the aim of Zen practice is to train you to become one of the best horses, you will have a big problem. If you practice Zen in the right way it does not matter whether you are the best horse or the worst one. When you are determined to practice zazen with the great mind of Buddha, you will find the worst horse is the most valuable one. In your very imperfections you will find the basis for your firm, way-seeking mind. Those who can sit perfectly physically usually take more time to obtain the true way. This reminds me of a time when I was practicing with him in San Francisco, having a hard time sitting still. I had the following dream: I went into the meditation hall and there were two really tall guys sitting in statue-like erectness and taking up the entire space, so that their heads reached the ceiling. There was no room for even a small fellow like me in the zendo. Then my teacher came in (He was even smaller than me). He proceeded to turn somersaults on the floor all around them playfully, beckoning me to join him, so I did! The two tall guys, who were sitting like statues didn’t even notice us. I was excited to tell my teacher this dream, which I did while driving him to the Zen center where he lived. But he fell asleep before I finished telling him. The message in the dream buoyed my practice at a time I was judging myself as a failure. The dream turned that around. I went from feeling like a failure to thinking I had a “special relationship” with my teacher. Then he fell asleep while I was talking, which didn’t make me feel so special any more. Still, the after-effects of the dream helped continue my practice without judging how well I was doing. It’s quite wonderful how deeply we can enjoy our moments and our lives when our inner tyrant loses its power over us. When this happens, we discover that, as Keizan says, we are able to “practice fully, penetrating in all ways, clarify Buddha’s enlightenment and your own enlightenment.” This is my second commentary on the first chapter of the 14th century Zen master Keizan’s book The Transmission of the Lamp. I ended the last one with the quote, “If you want an intimate understanding of enlightenment, you should get rid of you and Buddha.”
Every morning at Zen centers throughout the world, there’s one chant that’s invariably recited, the Heart Sutra. This sutra does such a good job of getting rid of you and Buddha that sometimes its called the Heart Attack Sutra. It denies the validity of all the beliefs that span the previous five hundred years of Buddhist teaching. This sutra ends with a declaration similar to Keizan’s: get rid of attachment to any concepts about Buddhism or the world in general and you will enter “Nirvana,” Nirvana not being a highfalutin state but merely one in which we have “blown out” the arbitrary boundary between self and other or ourselves and the world. When we do this, we are able to authentically be alive in this moment. This blowing out of a self which is continually judging, evaluating and comparing leads to a realization, according to Keizan, that “I” is the Great Earth and all beings as “and.” You are the Buddha’s eye; the Buddha’s eye is the entirety of each of you. Or as Jesus said, when asked whether he had seen Abraham, the most ancient and honored ancestor of his Judaic tradition, “before Abraham was, I am!” But then Keizan reverses himself, as do many Zen masters when he states “’And’ is not ‘I’ as the old fellow Shakyamuni Buddha.” He is reminding us not to get caught by the grandiosity of feeling one with all life. This can, ironically, turn into a type of narcissism. Yes, we are undivided, you are me, but also you are not me. You can never know what’s going on in my head, nor can I know what’s going on in yours. Then Keizan concludes this part of the chapter by first warning us not to get caught by either difference or identity. This being so, “I” and “and” are neither identical nor different. When we are not caught by attachment to either identity or difference, Keizan continues, we realize that human life includes both. Truthfully, your skin, flesh, bones, and marrow are totally “and.” The host inside the house is “I.” The more I am completely myself, the more I realize and live from a sense of deep connection with all life. Another way of saying this is that I honor my small self while feeling connected to all life beyond its perimeter, what my root teacher called Big Mind. In my next two or three posts I’d like to comment on a few sentences from the first chapter from The Transmission of Light written by the Japanese Zen teacher Keizan in the 14th century.
Many years ago my friend Kara attended a retreat with Suzuki Roshi in San Francisco. The morning of the third or fourth day of the retreat she happened to glance at Suzuki. She looked into his eyes and saw that they were completely empty; within that emptiness she saw all of life! She was so overwhelmed with joy that she laughed and cried simultaneously, leaping up and running out of the meditation hall. This reminds me of Keizan’s statement: “Even though mountains, rivers, and their myriad forms flourish in great abundance, none are left out of the eye of the Buddha…. It is not that you are standing there; the eye is enfolded within you.” It also reminds me of Meister Eckhart’s statement, “The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me; my eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” Tim Burkett has never been particularly loving. Instead he has been competitive, ambitious, and wanting to get ahead. But what happens when Tim empties out completely through his sitting practice? Nothing more nor less than, “one eye, one seeing, one knowing, one love.” When your mind is unburdened by thought, there’s a spaciousness evident in the eyes. My friend Kara said that as she kept looking at Suzuki, she experienced love and compassion emanating from him, “like a mother has for her child.” One day in late June when I was living with my wife and two young children in northern Minnesota, I went out early in the morning to pick wild strawberries for breakfast. I brought the berries into the kitchen, divided them into three portions, and sat down to eat. Before I knew it, my son had eaten both my wife’s portion and his own. I exclaimed, “Linda, Jed ate all your strawberries!” and she calmly replied, “Yes, and how good they tasted.” Many mothers seem able to open up beyond their own needs to support those of their child. Keizan and Meister Eckhart suggest that we all have that ability to do this with each other. “None are left out of the eye of the Buddha,” since that eye is enfolded with in all of us. This reminds me of the statement Jesus made when he was asked if he had seen Abraham, the Old Testament patriarch of Judaism. Then the Jews said to Jesus, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have You seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am!” But how do we Get rid of “you” and “Buddha” and quickly understand this matter of I”? To do this “quickly” we need to step out of the time process, as the Zen teacher Mazu says to his student Pai Chang in the following interchange from The Blue Cliff Record: Mazu and Pai Chang were walking together along a path when suddenly a flock of migratory geese was heard passing overhead. Mazu, turning to his pupil, asked, “What was that sound?” Baizhang innocently answered, “It was the cry of wild geese.” Mazu asked, “Where have they gone?” Baizhang said, “They have flown away.” Mazu grabbed Pai Chang’s nose and twisted it until his disciple cried out. Mazu demanded, “How can they fly away?” Mazu is reminding his student that things do not fly away — they are here always, part of a fabric which includes all existence. Four hundred years before Keizan, Mazu is encouraging us to stop viewing the world as a fragmented collection of elements and realize our undividedness from all of life, or to quote Jesus again, “Before Abraham was, I am.” In my last piece I discussed both focused and bare awareness or objectless meditation practices as potential openings to Big Heart Mind or Buddha nature. These two approaches are complementary. Even after meditating for many years, I sometimes use focused meditation to calm my mind down. It’s hard to experience bare or panoramic awareness if thoughts are so dominant that you cannot tune into your senses in the present moment. But what about subjectless meditation? A core Buddhist teaching is that the so-called subject or “I” is just a conglomeration of thoughts and feeling that is every changing.
This reminds me of an experience I had with my first teacher many years ago. At his suggestion, I established a weekly meditation group in my hometown of Palo Alto, which he led. The group was tiny until I put a short announcement about it in my hometown newspaper. We had 6 or 8 new people show up the next week. After Suzuki explained in careful detail how we should adjust our posture to sit effectively, I asked him to say something about how we should adjust our minds. He replied, “Oh, I can’t do that. Please, just sit.” I was frustrated by his answer and my predication that the new people would not come the following week proved correct. (Later, he did begin talking about ways to focus as well as clarifying that just sitting meant being aware in the present moment, because he realized that many of us needed this.) More than 45 years after his death, I teach different types of focused meditation as well as bare awareness. But what about subjectless meditation? Here’s a Zen story from the Tang dynasty in China: Yunyan asked Daowu, “How does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion use so many hands and eyes?” Daowu said, “It’s just like a person in the middle of the night reaching in search of a pillow.” Daowu seems to be talking about the radical practice of “don’t know.” What could be more subjectless than that? And here’s Case 20 from the Book of Equanimity around the same time. Dizang asked his student Fayan, “Where are you going?” Fayan said, “I am wandering aimlessly.” “What do you think of wandering?” said the teacher “I don’t know,” Said Fayan, looking puzzled. “Not knowing is most intimate,” said the teacher. Fayan was suddenly awakened. “Wandering aimlessly” seems to be an accurate description of how our own mind moves often haphazardly through varied patterns of thinking and feeling. But as I said in my last blog, this is not bad, since it happens to everyone including experienced meditators. Can we admit that we don’t know, on the deepest level of our being? If we do this, we can taste what Fayan discovered, the great intimacy of not having to know. “If you want to tame your sheep or cow, give it a large pasture,” said my root teacher, Suzuki Roshi. When you do this you have no idea what will happen. Subjectless meditation opens directly to Big Heart-Mind. When we do this we wake up from the dream created by thought and also realize that there is no one who has awakened! Instead of beating ourselves up for all our forgetfulness, can there be a deep appreciation of those moments when there’s no commentator dominating the scene. If we want to fall into subjectless meditation, can we appreciate or even practice “don’t know”? Instead of trying to sustain a state of mind in which you are practicing focused meditation or panoramic awareness, YOU DON’T KNOW, and you don’t need to know. I vividly remember two interchanges with my teacher, one of which I will share here. I picked him up at the airport after he had been visiting his student, Trudy (the editor of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind) after visiting her parents’ ranch in Montana. I asked him how he spent his time. He exclaimed gleefully “We rode horses!” Puzzled, I said, “But you don’t know to ride horses!” He replied, “I don’t know, but the horse knew.” In subjectless meditation instead of the finger pointing to the moon through focused meditation or bare awareness, we sink so deeply into don’t know, that we can JUST BE. Then we enjoy the moon even when it is completely invisible. Then instead of worrying about our identity or trying to be someone, we realize that we are continually supported by all life. |
AuthorTim Burkett, Guiding Teacher Archives
April 2022
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