Myoki Raizelah offers a reflection on the preferences and limitations our minds put on our ourselves and the world, and that these very limitations are the doorway to the unbound self which is "never apart from one, right where one is."
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Myoki Raizelah's talk notes:
I’m going to start with one of my favorite lines from the Genjo Koan.
The buddha way is, basically, leaping clear of the many of the one; thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and buddhas.Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.
Yet in attachment blossoms fall, and in aversion weeds spread.
Dogen is underscoring the importance of no preference.
Norman talked quite a bit about preference at our June Samish. How do we have no preference? As Norman pointed out, we all have preference. He said, “You’d rather live than die, right?” So, is it possible to leap clear.
Many of our preferences are an expression of our will to survive - our survival instinct.
I recently had the pleasure of living for 2 weeks with our “adopted” Kenyan grandchild, just 4 months old. Such a cutie pie. It had been a long time since I spent so much time with an infant. I noticed right away that he expressed strong preferences - preferences that precede the conditioned self. He prefers to be full and satiated, rather than having hunger pangs. He prefers a clean, fresh diaper to a dirty one. He prefers to be warm and cozy.
We all tend to prefer pleasant versus unpleasant experiences. Right?
I want to use this time together to tell you how I worked with preference as it emerged during our recent Samish sesshin.
I have noticed repeatedly in myself (and again when I was in sesshin) a strong preference for feeling spacious over a limited or contracted experience. I often resist my contractive reactions.
These different aspects of experience as referred to many different ways in our tradition:
The Ultimate or Historical perspective
Big Mind and Small Mind
Emptiness or separateness
Original self or conditioned self
Enlightenment and delusion
I ask myself, “Who wouldn’t prefer boundlessness over separateness?”
“Yet in attachments blossoms fall and in aversion weeds spread.” I realized during sesshin that Dogen was pointing me toward an important lesson.
As most of you know, I was a co-Ino, at sesshin. In that role, I feel some responsibility for helping to create the container that holds sesshin - supporting the forms and rituals, the schedule and the silence.
But in the first couple of days of sesshin, I found myself continually engaged in conversation. People were getting sick at sesshin and the medical committee had an impromptu meeting to come up with a current Covid policy. I found myself entwined in that process - which of course required lots of speech. Sesshin participants, still adjusting in the first days of silence, were talking to me and asking me all kinds of questions - including “Should I leave you a note?” - rather than just leaving a note. And for my first time, I had a co-Ino. So helpful, but any time you put 2 people together to share one job, it creates a need to converse to coordinate our efforts. If I had been smart, I would have had a meeting before and in the early days of sesshin to coordinate these efforts, to avoid the need to speak. But I didn’t have that forethought. So, there I found myself also talking to my work buddy (my co-ino), who like me, was just wanted to do a good job.
With all that happening, I found myself in the first days of sesshin frustrated with the situation, tense because my wish was to support silence, and feeling critical of those talking around and to me. I felt the urge to control my environment. Of course, I didn’t like seeing and feeling these critical, controlling parts of myself.
As I sat with myself, I tried to avoid feeling critical or controlling. My father was loving to me, but had a critical and controlling edge. I tried to convince myself that I was not like him. I didn’t want to be like him. I was trying, making great effort in fact, to make these parts of myself go away.
I tired working with a Gata:
I breath in, I relax,
I breath out, I let go
That seemed to work - but not really. I relaxed one day, but the tension, contraction, and futile efforts to control my environment came back with a furor the next day.
I went to dokusan and shared with Norman that I was trying to let go, but was trapped in the snares of my own mind. And that, in fact, my efforts to let go were actually counterproductive - because efforting prevents letting go. Right?
“Ah. Have patience with yourself,” was his first reply.
Then he said something quite pivotal for me in my process. He pointed toward the bodhisattva heart that lives under the critic and controller. He helped me to see that love, a good-hearted intention, a bodhisattva spirit underneath the parts of myself that I was resisting. What I most wanted - what was alive in my heart - was to support the depth of practice that can only be felt in the silence of sesshin.
Over the days of sesshin, I continued to think about this conversation with Norman, and this verse from Dogen’s Fukanzazengi kept coming up for me:
The way is basically perfect and all-pervading. How could it be contingent upon practice and realization? The dharma-vehicle is free and untrammeled. What need is there for concentrated effort?
I was caught by continuous effort - even the effort to let go, ironically.
“Breathing in, I relax,
Breathing out, I let go”
I was trying too hard!
Indeed, the whole body is far beyond the world's dust. Who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from one, right where one is.
It is never apart from one, right where one is.
From my conversation with Norman, I saw that even in the center of my bounded, constricted, limited self is a bodhisattva trying to express her heart.
Then Dogen continues:
“If there is the slightest discrepancy, the way is as distant as heaven from earth.”
A bodhisattva’s heart, expressed through the conditioned self “is as distant as heaven from earth.” Yet “it is never apart from one, right where one is.” Just look deeper. Norman helped me to look deeper.
When I saw the vow of love under my efforts to control my environment, letting go naturally happened. I relaxed. And I was able to accept the parts of myself that I was trying to push away (the critical and controlling parts) . When I was able to accept those parts of my personality, they naturally softened, allowing me to connect with a more unbound experience.
Limitation is a doorway to the unbound self. That’s the name of this talk:
Limitation is a doorway to the unbound self.
In Suzuki Roshi’s book, Not Always So, there is a chapter named “Wherever you are, Enlightenment is there.”
Here are a couple things he writes here (pages 127, 129 and 130):
“Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.”
This sounds a lot like Dogen in Fukanzazengi:
The way is basically perfect and all-pervading…It is never apart from one, right where one is.
Suzuki also writes, “You may think that you can only establish practice after you attain enlightenment, but it is not so. True practice is established in delusion, in frustration. If you make some mistake, that is where you establish your practice. There is no other place for you to establish your practice.”
Go deeper. Right here. Stand in the muddy water. Right in the middle of your constricted self.
Yesterday, I went for a Dharma talk walk with my teacher, Chris Fortin. She was talking about Joan Sutherland’s commentary on the Vimalakirti. She spoke of Endarkenment. Endarkenment. That word perked my interest. We often hear about Enlightenment, but rarely of Endarkenment.
Enlightenment, she said, is the brilliant illumination that lifts us up out of the suffering world. It is about transcending this world. Endarkenment, on the other hand, is the radiance of the deep that lets us find home in the world. Endarkenment is the heart that breaks open to life. It is the birthplace of compassion.
Ultimately, this dualistic understanding that Enlightenment is here while Endarkenment is there - isn’t really dual, she says.
In Taoist language Endarkenment is the Yin that complements the Yang’s Enlightenment. The Yin-Yang symbol represents a dynamic relationship in which the Yin becomes Yang becomes Yin. And so forth. A “swinging gate,” my teacher would say. I like that image (demonstrate with Yin-Yang, Enlightenment-Endarkenment, Relative-Absolute, Limited self-Unbounded self)
Looking further:
In the center of big Yang, you find Yin; in the center of the big Yin, you find Yang. In the center of Endarkenment, is Enlightenment. In the center of what Okamura calls the “limited, individual self” is Buddha’s heart. In the center of my critical and controlling self, I found my Boddhisatva wish to help and to support the sangha at sesshin.
Guided meditation:
Feel into an area of your life where you feel contracted. Maybe in a relationship at work? Maybe in your relationship to work? Maybe with a family member? Or with someone here at sangha?
What is the quality of the contraction? In what ways, do you feel small or limited here? Do you experience yourself as separate, or bounded? What is the quality of contraction in your body? How is it expressed in the relationship or situation?
Triad:
Brief description of the way or feeling of contraction in that relationship. You can keep it brief. They don’t need to understand the details. It is more important to share with your group:
What is your deeper desire here? What is in your bodhisattva heart? What pure or good intentions underlie this contracted place in you?
Group discussion of what came up.
