Portland Buddhist Priory

(To see the whole newsletter, go here.)

Over the last little while, two Dharma friends raised an interesting question: “why should I be mindful, when I can use my minds imaginative capacity to spend time, figuratively, outside of my present circumstances? Why should I put effort into being aware and mindful in the moment, when it is unpleasant here in this moment?”

First, we humans are living in a pretty tenuous position in which forces way stronger than us are acting upon us all the time. Think: gravity; tectonic, volcanic and tidal forces; market forces; people with a strong desire and the means to control the lives of others.

We live in a world where, despite our collective efforts, we have not yet been able to change the basic fact of us being soft and squishy in a world that is bigger and stronger than we are. My teacher taught that a Buddhist should attempt to leave the world a better place than they found it and I fully support this idea. And, realistically, our ability to change externalities is quite limited. Sometimes the unpleasantness that we encounter is unavoidable.

What can we do then? We can turn our attention to what our minds are doing. I have heard it said that to encourage the attitude, in the face of some injustice, of looking at what our minds are doing is a form of blaming the victim. That what we really should do is redouble our efforts to get people to not treat each other in a beastly way. But really the two things, looking at our minds and working to improve the world, are not mutually exclusive.

Given that I have to live with my own mind pretty much 24-7 and given the limited success, despite our regular and concerted efforts over the last 50 or so thousand years, to collectively change outward circumstance to suit ourselves (one way or another), I am glad to have found a way that I can work with and improve my own direct experience, my own mind.

Mindfulness, or awareness in the present moment, is one aspect, one tool in the tool box, of working with the mind within the context of practicing the Dharma. This should be emphasized: as another of my wise teachers put it, mindfulness is not enlightenment; mindfulness is not the end of practice. Mindfulness is like walking into a darkened room and turning on the light: it just enables us to see what is there.

Being with “what is” in the present moment is bigger than simple mindfulness. Doing zazen in the present moment, although simple in itself, is much bigger than simple mindfulness.

When we turn on the light of mindfulness, we become aware of what is actually going on in our minds. When I look at my own mind, the honest awareness can arise: I have made choices and I am living out the consequences of my past actions and choices. Yes, there is also the presence of the consequence of many external influences, but among the things present in my honest awareness, are the consequences of my own choices, good and bad and neutral. These consequences, it turns out, are often the most important influence on how I experience the present moment.

This is a critical awareness; it is critical to take responsibility for my own choice.  To give up that responsibility by putting the blame for my present feelings on external forces is to give away my power to effect change on the condition of my own mind.

When we turn our awareness to what is going on in our minds, we might notice that we feel despair, grief, outrage or frustration. We might notice that we feel any of a whole host of things; this noticing is just the beginning. One of the possible courses of action is to, effectively, turn out the light. We can go off into some fantasy about how we would like things to be. Usually, for many of us, we are, to some degree or other, skilled at this. (Daydreaming?) Of course in extreme cases this is called dissociation and may lead down some pretty unpleasant paths.

For many of us, we find ourselves exploring mindfulness and meditation because we have experience with the limitations and negative consequences of trying to distract ourselves from seeing what is actually going on in our minds, trying to separate ourselves from the experience of our own mind. In other words, it is likely that if we are reading this, we already have some idea of why it is helpful to be aware and mindful in the present moment.

We come to meditation and mindfulness, the attempt to be present with “what is” in the moment, because we would like to heal the despair, fear, grief and frustration that we feel in our own minds, feelings that are only temporarily affected by changing external circumstances. These are feelings and mental states that can be healed if we take the time to attend to them and do not try to cover them up.

So, recognizing the limited effectiveness of distraction, we go forward with our mindful awareness. But how we go forward or how we bear our mindful awareness is really important. Of course, what we do with what we find in meditation is the subject of a vast literature, so, for this article it seems good to just make a few points about our tone or attitude to mindful awareness.

It doesn’t really help to let loose our inner fascist on the project of being in the moment. Our inner fascist is that part of ourselves that can see so clearly what is wrong and then implements its plan to force correctness onto ourselves. Our inner fascist is about as effective inwardly in helping our minds as it is in bringing actual help to the world. Forcing ourselves or others, no matter how righteous our views or intentions rarely leads to lasting good.

So the first thing after making the determination to work on being mindfully present in this moment is to bring a bit of kindness and compassion to the feelings we encounter in our minds. The wish to help ourselves in a kind and wise way is at the root of who we actually are and is at the root of how we can effect actual change in ourselves.

Mostly it is enough to be with what arises in our experience and to simply allow it to pass away without interference. But this tone of kindness toward ourselves can make a big difference, especially when we begin to recognize that we cannot escape the consequences of our own choices.

Also, an attitude of friendly curiosity about what is happening in our experience is very helpful; the “hmm, wonder why I am so pissed off right now, that’s interesting?” Or, “I have always just assumed that my inner fascist is just the way that I am, but maybe I don’t have to be that way?” (Part of taking responsibility is recognizing that, along with our many good qualities, we have a great capacity for misinterpreting the meaning of what we encounter both in the world and in our own mind; being still and mindful allows for the possibility of the arising of different ways of seeing and understanding.) The attitude of friendliness is important; after all, we do have to live with ourselves and to befriend whatever negativity we might find in ourselves can go a long way towards helping with the healing of our pain and grief.

And finally, a bit of patience is really helpful here. Patience is of value in its own right but is also an expression of our basic compassionate intent and can really be helpful in allowing ourselves to just live with ourselves as we are. We may not be able to quickly change the way things are, but we can learn to work with them and find peace within ourselves as we work to make the world we find, a little bit better both inwardly and outwardly.

(To see the complete November 2016 newsletter, go here)

It is a little hard to believe that it has been so long, but this weekend, on Sunday the 6th of November, we will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of Reverend Master Jiyu-Kennett’s death with our Founders Day festival. In addition to respecting and revering her for being the founding teacher of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives and the founder of our temple, I, like many people, feel a very personal connection to Rev. Master Jiyu since she was the living teacher of the monks and lay practitioners involved with our Order when I first started practice. And more than that, she seemed to really speak to a part of me that I had little hope of being addressed by a living person.

Reflecting on Rev. Master Jiyu’s influence, I am reminded of a small episode from the life of the Buddha. After a long period of extreme effort, he realized that asceticism does not work and gave up forcing himself in that way. He took a meal and a bath and, standing next to a river, maybe after having cleaned his alms bowl, he tosses the bowl into the water saying “If this bowl floats up stream, I will attain enlightenment,” and the bowl floats upstream.

In practicing the Dharma, we all will find ourselves in a situation where we will need to go against the stream: sometimes perhaps in an outward or social way, but mostly we will need to go against the stream of the greed and anger and confusion we find in our own minds.

Rev. Master Jiyu used to say that in the imperial era of the United Kingdom, the one unforgivable social transgression, when living in the provincial areas of the empire, was to “go native”. To adopt the values and views of the people “conquered” by the empire. It was ok to study things like Buddhism from an academic perspective, but one must not believe in it or take it seriously. When she encountered the Dharma, she recognized on a heart level that it had great value and had the courage to wholeheartedly give herself to it: she went native.

This willingness to take practice seriously and go against the stream, not just to do something different, but because of what I can only describe as the necessity of the heart, was to me one of her greatest offerings and I feel continually blessed by all that she made possible. I often find myself in a state of wonder over the unlikely set of circumstances that has given me the good fortune to encounter others who take the Buddhadharma seriously and carefully cherish and preserve it by putting it into practice even in small ways.

Rev. Leon

The Perfection Of Zen

By Reverend Master Jiyu-Kennett

[The temple Rev. Master refers to is Unpuku-ji, in Haino, Mie-ken, Japan. The picture above was taken at Unpuku-ji during Reverend Master Jiyu’s Chief Priest installation ceremonies (Kessei) and shows the statue mentioned in the article below.]

The perfection of Zen teaching must, of necessity, show itself in the way of life of the trainee, and in his behaviour to other people, otherwise he has learnt nothing. But perfection is something at which we work, it is not some­thing that we can ever completely achieve—hence there is nothing but end­less training for the trainee, and no one ever says he is either enlightened or not enlightened—he just goes on in his endless training, doing the best he can.

I learned a lot of what I know of the perfection of Zen teaching from the statue of Kannon in my own temple in the country. When I first took this temple there was only half a roof, no ceilings, no wall, no gate, a weed patch for a garden, no gas, water or sewerage arrangements and only one electric light bulb which you carried on a long line from the ceremony hall to the one room in which there were mats and in which I was to live. I was abbess of this two hundred year old temple in which even the statue of Kannon needed an umbrella to keep out the rain. Rats scuttled at her feet and wood worms gnawed at her pedestal, but her face was completely at peace. With hand upraised in blessing she gazed down on me in utter serenity, silently blessing the village in spite of the fact that her house had been allowed to fall into ruin, and drunks sported themselves bawdily in her meditation hall, for the temple had no parishioners at that time and was known to be the poorest temple in all Japan.

For the first few days I did nothing but zazen in the company of the beautiful statue then, as the weather grew warmer and I began to look around me at the state of the temple’s dereliction, I gradually collected the money to mend the roof. I put up the ceilings with my own hands, never knowing before that time that I could handle a hammer and nails. Together with friends we put up a wall and built a gate, and begged enough mats from those who were buying new ones for their houses to cover the floors of all the rooms. As you will see from the news-letter the house is almost finished—only three ceilings now needing very slight repair and, this year, a friend is putting in modern toilets. It has been hard work; it has taken a long time—and I have loved every minute of it. But the statue has the same smile of benediction now I have almost finished as when I began—come rain, sleet, snow or typhoon, buildings or no buildings, she blesses the village. And when the drunks insult her by making water in her now lovely garden and desecrate her meditation hall she does not complain.

This altitude of uncomplaining all acceptance is one of the signs of the perfection of Zen teaching and the complete peace and freedom that training for such an attitude of mind can bring is its own reward. But, you may say, I have no such statue to teach me such things. My answer is that you can find spiritual truth in everything you see; even the most inanimate thing can be the master of a true trainee, hence the stupidity of looking for a specific person as a “master” or teacher. If you doubt this, take a look at the road outside your house. The rain soaks it, the sun scorches it, the traffic churns up its surface and the dogs and the drunks foul it without ever a sound of complaint there­from. When the trainee can become like the road outside his house, com­pletely uncomplaining in the face of all events, both good and bad as the world understands good and bad, he will have come close to the perfection of Zen. My advice to all of you who grumble and complain is to look with religious eyes instead of worldly ones on everything around you and make even a blade of grass your master for it has much to teach. No one expects you to become perfect but there is room for improvement in all of us. And remember that three of the signs of enlightenment in our behaviour are gratitude for all things, and a complete lack of either grumbling or anger.

Originally printed in The Chu Shin Zenji Newsletter, [Sōji-ji,]February, 1968.