(Follow this link to see the October 2021 Priory Newsletter where this was originally published.)

When the rain returns, I think of the Water of Compassion.

The third of the four practices, Seeking Nothing is as follows (from the Red Pine translation):

Third, seeking nothing. People of this world are deluded. They’re always longing for something – always, in a word, seeking. But the wise wake up. They choose reason over custom. They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the seasons. All phenomena are empty. They contain nothing worth desiring. Calamity forever alternates with prosperity! To dwell in the three realms is to dwell in a burning house. To have a body is to suffer. Does anyone with a body know peace? Those who understand this detach themselves from all that exists and stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutras say, “To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.” When you seek nothing, you’re on the Path.

They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the seasons.

Occasionally, in our seeking, we find what we want and we get to have that thing. We might get what we want after a long period of working toward that thing. Or maybe it shows up early or along the way of our life as a gift. We might say to Bodhidharma, when we hear what he has to say, “you say seek nothing but I have what I want; don’t bother me with your negativity.” And Bodhidharma might just bow and go about his business.

And still, the Buddha and Bodhidharma have said what they have said and we have heard it.

There is impermanence and there is the sublime.

Having heard, and for a moment recognized what we have heard, a little itch begins to take root in us: something like the thought, “at the very least, this thing that I have found will eventually be lost” appears in the corner of our mind. Rev. Master Jiyu used to say something like, “all are called, few pay attention to the call, fewer still heed the call.” The truth of impermanence and the sublime are truths that we recognize in our own hearts; this part of us that recognizes these truths is called Bodhicitta or, “the mind that seeks the way.”

When Bodhicitta is awakened within us, even in a small way, by “hearing” the bell of the sublime, it starts that itch. The first meditation group that I was involved with recommended reading Chogyam Trungpa’s “The Myth of Freedom.” As I remember it, I found the book helpful but got diverted to something else. Only later, after I had established myself in practice, did I pick it up again and finish it. After I picked it up again, I had to laugh when I came across a section where he says, don’t start to practice unless you intend to go all the way. If you start and then stop, it will always be as if there is something unfinished in your life. I laughed because I could see that for me, the itch had started, the bell had rung and couldn’t be unrung. (Although I think for me, that bell had rung even before I encountered Buddhism.)

Eventually, if we follow this call, this itch, we will come to a place in our life where we have to look more deeply at what we have found. But a lot of the time, with the things that we cherish, we don’t want to look too closely. We want to avoid looking, because we fear that we will lose what we cherish, because we do not wish to admit that we have already lost it. How much suffering do we humans create by trying to keep things as they are? By trying to keep our “bodies” from changing with the seasons, in one way or another?

When I first went to Shasta Abbey, in the cloister between the kitchen and the Buddha hall, tucked into a small niche, was a diorama called the Kanzeon garden. I was there for an introductory retreat and for the orientation tour we stopped and looked at this diorama. The monk leading the tour said it was a three-dimensional representation of a traditional Buddhist mandala called the mandala of the six worlds, wheel of life or the Bhavacakra.

Explaining the complicated topic of the mandala of the six worlds is beyond the scope of this commentary (the Wikipedia article linked above is a reasonable and more thorough introduction) except to say that there are two of the most important points of Buddhist practice contained in this type of teaching. One is that help and practice can be found in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. And the second is that there is something beyond the continuously cycling wheel of existence; the continuous cycle of calamity and prosperity.

Also, it should be said that in Buddhism it is taught, and so implicit in the mandala of the six worlds, that no realm is permanent: hell is not permanent; heaven is not permanent; our human situations are not permanent.

Anyway, the version in the cloister at Shasta Abbey was three-dimensional and was set up on a triangular slope about seven feet across at the lower base of the triangle. The slope was covered in green AstroTurf. Each of the six worlds, the hell realm; the animal realm; the realm of the hungry ghosts; the heaven realm; the asura realm – a type of aggressive god; and the human realm, was represented mostly in action figures of the day. He-Man and She-Ra were there; Barbie and Ken were there; Stretch Armstrong and a host of others including various monsters and the like were there.

As the monk explained some of the highlights of the diorama, she eventually came to a small scene set partly up the slope. (At the bottom of the slope were the lower realms – hell, hungry ghost and animal – at the top was the heaven realm with some richly attired figures on string caught in the moment of ascending.) Our small scene was part of the human realm and depicted a farmhouse facing down hill, away from the heavenly realm. Around the farmhouse there was a well tended garden and the family was gathered on the porch, happily listening to live music.

The point I remember about this was that the house was set up so that the people had their backs turned away from the part of the diorama representing working toward understanding the deeper aspect of life. It was explained that there was no problem with any of the things going on in the scene, just that there seemed to be a deliberate not looking at the deeper aspects or potential of life.

When we are confronted with the prospect of looking more deeply at what we have found, it can appear as if we are being asked to choose between practice and what we like or love; or between practice and our health; or between practice and our well being; or…? But really, what we are asked is to look deeply and let go of that which cannot be held on to.

Often, when we consider letting go, our mind jumps to the conclusion that we are asked to get rid of or cut off the thing we hold onto; we think we are asked break our commitments or renege on our responsibilities but this is far from the truth. Really, what we are being invited to do is to allow our mind, our relationships, our work, our recreation, our heart, to change with the seasons. We are invited to allow these things to be alive, even though that inevitably means that they will die.

When what we have found, whatever that might be, feels threatened, and particularly feels threatened by practice or the Dharma, perhaps we are not yet seeing things clearly? If, at that time of being threatened, we can turn toward the deeper matter, toward practice, toward the sublime, we have the chance of helping along the transformation that got us going on the path in the first place.

To be continued….