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

Our Library Kanzeon. (Kanzeon is also known as Avalokiteshwara in Sanskrit, Guanyin in Chinese and Chenrezig in Tibetan)

(As I write this, I am sharply aware that what I say here will not do the subject justice. It is my hope that you will not take what I say as an attempt to be definitive on the subject but rather, it is an attempt to bring up a thing for consideration in the place of meditation. LK)

The fourth of the four practices, Practicing the Dharma is as follows (from the Red Pine translation):

Fourth, practicing the Dharma. The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure.  By this truth, all appearances are empty. Defilement and attachment, subject and object don’t exist. The sutras say, “The Dharma includes no being because it’s free from the impurity of being, and the Dharma includes no self because it’s free from the impurity of self.” Those wise enough to believe and understand these truths are bound to practice according to the Dharma. And since that which is real includes nothing worth begrudging, they give their body, life, and property in charity, without regret, without the vanity of giver, gift, or recipient, and without bias or attachment. And to eliminate impurity they teach others, but without becoming attached to form. Thus, through their own practice they’re able to help others and glorify the Way of Enlightenment. And as with charity, they also practice the other virtues. But while practicing the six virtues to eliminate delusion, they practice nothing at all. This is what’s meant by practicing the Dharma Path.
The Dharma is the truth that all natures are pure.

This is a tricky one. I mean, is he saying that anything goes? That bad acts are really good acts? That causing harm is somehow permissible? No, Those wise enough to believe and understand these truths are bound to practice according to the Dharma; we are bound to act according to the whole of the Dharma, including the precepts. He is pointing to something here that is different and deeper than our ordinary understanding of things. He is actually not commenting on the things and situations outside of ourselves in a philosophical way; at least those things aren’t the significant part of what he is pointing at.

Let me repeat this: when talking about Buddhist Wisdom, we are not commenting on the rightness or wrongness of an action that takes place outside of ourselves, it is closer to say that we are talking about what happens within the individual and how they perceive or respond to an action.

What I mean is, imagine that some action occurs outside of ourselves that we witness. That action has consequences that are hard to bear for the beings in the vicinity of the action (maybe even us). What the Dharma is helping us to understand and learn is that we can change how we see and understand that action and that new “seeing and understanding,” which is closer to being in accord with fundamental reality, will help us to understand the action and respond to it in a way that does not increase the suffering.

All through this “Outline of Practice,” Bodhidharma has been giving us kind advice about how we can shed our own conditioning which covers up our own wisdom. When we connect with our own wisdom, the world appears differently; we understand the world, and the events and things that appear in it, differently.

Most of us are driven by fears and misperceptions which we may only have a vague awareness of. We are like that person in the classic dream who is being chased by a monster. That person often doesn’t even know what the monster really is. But when that person decides to stop running, something changes. When that person decides they have had enough running, when they decide that whatever that monster might be, facing it is worth the benefit of no longer being caught in the endless running, when they stop and turn around, then they will be able to put that suffering which is driving them to rest. They will be able to face and accept what they are running from. Waking up from the dream is also significant, since we then have the opportunity to see that we have created both the running self and the monster.

Often we stop and turn around out of desperation and weariness: we have just had enough. But there is another aspect of our turning around which is this darned sense, this itchy feeling that there is something more that we just aren’t seeing fully yet. We have this feeling, which can be vaguely vexing, that maybe the Dharma is really pointing to an experience that we do not yet fully know, but that we could know.

This itch, this sense, is what allows us to consider that we could actually be pure ourselves. While it is true that we are Pure, and our sense that the Dharma might actually offer us a way out of our suffering is accurate, we can still view this through the distorted lens of the discriminated self. We might think “I am a me and you are a you.” Because we think like this and hold onto that thinking, because we view the world from the perspective of the small self, we distort what purity is.

This is what Bodhidharma is saying when he says: By this truth, all appearances are empty. Defilement and attachment, subject and object don’t exist. The sutras say, “The Dharma includes no being because it’s free from the impurity of being, and the Dharma includes no self because it’s free from the impurity of self.”  The impurity of self is the result of looking at existence through the lens of the discriminatory mind. With the discriminatory mind, we try to define and solidify the self; this attempt to define and solidify is what makes the self impure.

When we hear that all natures are pure from the point of view of the self, we can mistakenly hear it as a confirmation of a view. We might have the view that “my self, with all these characteristics which I both like and do not like, is real and exists and is good.” When we hear the teaching that all natures are pure, we might mistakenly think that the self, as we conceive of it, is pure and is therefore true and reliable. But the view, the belief, that the self exists, in a way that can be held onto, is not a reliable view; this view about the self is what will cause us suffering if we hold onto it.

Of course, the Dharma regularly tells us that a view of a separate unchanging self is a mistaken view and Bodhidharma reminds us of this when he says the Dharma includes no self because it’s free from the impurity of self.  We can also see the effects of this unreliability by paying attention to how we react to circumstances that arise in our lives. How do we react when someone suggests that we are wrong? How do we react when someone suggests that we are bad? That we are impure? How do we react when someone does not confirm our “rightness” or the purity of our small self? Do we feel these things as a threat? A judgement? When we are criticized, do we automatically and with heightened and inflamed emotion feel we need to defend ourselves? Feel we need to prove the other party wrong or incompetent? Of course, few of us will think that we are never wrong and therefore should never be told no, but how much effort do we put into creating a cloud of obfuscating dust with our vigorous assertions about how we should be told that we are wrong?

Over time, as we sit, determined to take refuge in the activity of meditation, day in and day out, steadily and patiently coming back to our cushion, we gradually begin to soften our grip on the self: we can come to gradually see that the self we are so bent on defending is just a continuously changing phantasm like the flame of a candle which cannot be held onto.

We all do this creating a self, holding onto and defending a self. And, we can all, no matter what suffering we come from, learn to let that self dissolve; we can learn to let it shift and change, dance, like that candle flame. We can dissolve our suffering if we persist in keeping going with our Dharma practice.

As I sit writing this I feel this unsettled feeling brought about by hearing some news that didn’t go my way. As I do the work of writing this, I notice the feeling arising and, letting go of it (even though the feeling doesn’t go away), I bring my mind back to the work. As I sit with it, I recognize it as that feeling like having the carpet pulled out from under me that often comes with betrayal or disappointment. In this case I know that there was no betrayal from outside of me, there is only the self having hoped that the thing would go my way and, grasping after that hope, I started to look at the situation as if, of course, it was going to go the way that I wanted. This is how we create suffering around the self, but also how we can train with the self and let go of the suffering and the habits of our own mind which create or increase suffering. Gradually, as I work on this, the feeling dissipates.

Steadily, patiently, I turn around and look; being willing to see what is there and the truth of what is there. Steadily, patiently, I ask myself is there a way that I am breaking the precepts? Steadily, patiently, with as much gentle kindness and friendliness as I can muster, I release my grip on whatever I find myself holding desperately to. I do my best to let go where I hold on. This is Practicing the Dharma.

When we accept and know, in our blood and bones, the truth that all natures are pure, it is the basis for a boundless compassion and loving-kindness: a bit of a mystery but, nonetheless, true. We’ll talk more about this next time.

To be continued….