This is all so simple isn't it? In about 500 BCE, Buddha realized that no one is satisfied. We all
think, “I hate that” and “I want that” and “if I only got rid of all I hate and got all I want, it would
be great”. But the Buddha realized that this was irrational thinking. He also realized that
everything is changing, that nothing stays as we want it to be, and that everything is
interconnected to the point that it is essentially one giant network. This is profound, but simple.
He decided to teach this, and from all accounts, people ate it up. So much so that they
wanted to remember it. Just one problem. No one could write anything down yet. So they
memorized it. And, problematically, the Buddha had a habit, in fact a teaching, of trying to
teach his simple concepts to people at a level they understood, so he explained his teachings
in many different ways. To keep track, people made lists as a mnemonic device. They also
made lists of things that other smart people that had heard and interpreted the Buddha’s
teachings said. In his translation of the Vimalakirti Sutra, Robert Thurman attempted to make a
list of all the lists and came up with a list of 85 lists, and that was just from India, the rest of us
hadn’t even gotten involved yet. Thurman’s list also includes lists that are lists of other lists….it
gets overwhelming. And if when I first spoke you were thinking, “He should have started with
the lists of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Noble Path;” then congratulations, you have
proven to us both how different sects arise.
So then writing happens. And writing happens in a culture of scarcity, where more and richer is
synonymous with better. So now we have six legged white elephants, innumerable thrones of
gold and jewels, and a hundred thousand million kalpas.
But, the teachings are still so clear and important that they continue to spread. And, according
to legend, this one guy carries them across the mountains (the Himalayas, for goodness sake)
to China. Here, they run straight into the reductiveness of the Dao and the hierarchy of
Confucious and people use the teachings for verbal combat of all things. Of course, now we
have writing, so the game summaries of the combat are written down so that we have koans to
contemplate, with the help of verses written about the combat and interpretations of both the
game summary and of the verses.
And someone wanders off with the teachings into the three kingdoms of Korea. From there, the
King of an area called Paekche literally presents them as a gift in exchange for military supportto the rulers of a little part of an island off his eastern shore. The rulers of that island kingdom,
Yamato, believe (as do many people of faith) that religious rites can buy you favors from the
gods. In Japanese, this is termed “genze riyaku” or “this world benefits” in Latin it might be
termed “quid pro quo”. They start promoting the rituals of this foreign religion in parallel with
their own polytheistic, animistic local faith, hoping that they can cover their bases with all the
gods and protect their kingdom, and as importantly, their rule over that kingdom. The new faith
is particularly attractive to them as it can be placed under state control, the monks regulated
and used as tax collectors in addition to praying. The ranks of monks are standardized to
match those of the state officials. They like it so much that they spread the faith faster than the
new monks can translate the now voluminous teachings of the Buddha and the thousand years
of philosophers, scribes, commentators and poets that followed him, so they start chanting
things by just reading the names of the characters out loud without translating them. A
significant hybridization with local beliefs changes both the teachings of Buddhism and the
local religion, giving rise to Shinto as we now know it, and forever changing Buddhism. And
Yamato grows its borders and changes its name, to Nihon, which we mispronounce with a J as
Japan. In their spare time, the monks write more poems about the moon reflected in buckets of
water, dew on blades of grass and mountains walking, and another monk writes a commentary
on the poem and on and on.
And finally, two different priests bring all of this Japanese tradition to the United States. A
Rinzai priest at the start of the 1900s and a Soto priest in the middle of the twentieth century.
The Soto priest arrives in the Western town of San Francisco at a time when many Americans
are craving something other than the faith of their fathers. And they try to learn this new
iteration of everything that has gone before, subtly changing it yet again as it runs into Western
psychological theories, acute societal changes, and other Buddhisms, that now meet because
the dualistic world is now as interconnected as the Dharma world is said to be. The faith is
stripped of some of it’s more magical aspects as it is hybridized with scientific rationalism.
Westerners, typically of European origin and affluent, with the fervor of converts, practice as
monks in lay clothing. Some ordain but continue to lead full lives as lay people, an innovation
rare in Asian countries. New commentaries arise, influenced by Western needs and
understandings, and again troubled by the fact that the Dharma has now come down through
at least 7 different languages before English. 128 generations after the Buddha and it is so
complicated. And yet, all of it, all of it, is about greed, hate and delusion, suffering,
impermanence and non self.
In the midst of all this complexity, we can viscerally feel the truth of this. I feel bad when I don’t
have what I want, or when I am forced to be with something I don’t want. I have lived long
enough and acquired enough things to know that material things and wealth don’t stop the
feeling of dissatisfaction. I have watched too many friends and relatives die, too many perfect
marriages dissolve, too many friendships end to think that things are permanent. Non self is
tricky, but also both intellectually and viscerally obvious, although somewhat uncomfortable to
think about. Our ego wants so, so much to be permanent and completely independent from
anyone else, but our boundaries are much more porous than that. Leaving aside the fact that
since entering this room we have all inhaled bits of each other (sorry, but it’s true), whether you
like what I am saying or not, I have changed the way you think and the way you are, and your
facial expressions and reactions have changed me. Beyond that, we know we are all
connected far more than the Western concept of self allows, and sympathy and empathy are
not just constructs within oneself. Thich Nhat Hanh gave a dharma talk in which he described
working on a carpentry project. He explained that because he was right handed, sometimes
his right hand, in which he held the hammer, accidentally hit his left hand, in which he held the
nail. He pointed out that the left hand did not take the hammer and hit the right hand with it for
revenge, because both hands were part of the same whole and the whole felt the suffering of
the left thumb. This phenomenon happens even at a distance. When a Palestinian father goes
for food aid and returns to the school in Gaza where his family was sheltering only to find it
flattened by an Israeli bomb and his family buried in the rubble, we all feel that. When the
sister of the Israeli pilot who dropped the bomb was raped and killed in her home on a kibbutz
by a Hamas terrorist, we all feel that. Closer to home, we all feel the sense of panic and loss
the high school student in a farming community feels when she returns home from class to find
that her father has been detained by ICE while working his job picking in the fields to give her a
better life.
So, what does this have to do with us, especially those of us who are lay people, the focus of
this year’s practice period?
If you feel the pull to be a cleric, to leave home and become a monastic, or to stay home in a
lay life but put on the robes, please do. If nothing else, you’ll save a fortune on hair care
products over your lifetime. Everything I mentioned earlier, all the lists, the fantastical stories,
the carrying to China, the sailing to Japan, coming to America, the poems, the commentaries,
the explanations, are all because of clerics. We need clerics to wrap and deliver the gift of the
Buddha’s teaching. But, there is another list. The Emptiness of the Three Wheels. Giver,
receiver and gift. The gift of the Buddha’s teaching and the clerical giver, are pointless without the receiver. That’s the lay people. When you get this gift I implore you not to leave it on your
shelf, neatly arranged in alphabetical order with your other gifts, only to be enjoyed privately.
As laypeople, we are the interface between Buddhism and the rest of the world. We don’t have
to dress differently, we don’t go door to door, we don’t hand out leaflets, we live the Dharma
moment by moment in the world outside. Take the gift out, listen to the instructions you were
given with the gift and share the hell out of it. Because the gift of the teachings is universal
compassion. Through universal compassion we can help save all beings. I know that seems
trite to say especially in the current political climate. How can our paltry efforts heal the world,
especially when destructive forces hold power and much of our effort revolves around sitting
still on a cushion? One of the teachers I have had longest in my life has no idea he teaches
Zen. He is a staunch Catholic, and Rokudan in Hayashi Ha Shito Ryu Karate Do. Salerno
Sensei taught me that you can never chop down a tree with a single axe strike, you just keep
chipping away. In class, one of his favorite pieces of advice is, “Another thousand times.” So
get off your cushion, leave the temple, go into the world and start saving it: smile, give
someone emotional support, greet your red cap wearing neighbor with kindness, stop buying
detergent in plastic bottles, put solar panels on your house, charge your electric car with those
solar panels, speak out, vote, help refugees, give money to or volunteer for good causes, heck,
leave a bigger tip at the coffee shop, and on and on. A thousand times, from tens of thousands
of practitioners over hundreds of thousands of days and the mountains begin to move.
That would be an excellent place to end this talk, but I had a thought about compassion that I
need to share. At the conclusion of the sesshin that opened practice period, I was chatting
with Nomon Tim after Raizelah’s ordination and the topic of compassion came up. I had just
given my Way Seeking Mind talk the day before. For those of you who heard the talk, you may
remember that my failure at marriage was a big catalyst for me in becoming a Buddhist.
During that period of my life, Nomon had suffered through quite a few dokusan sessions that
covered the mess that was my relationship, and he commented that he had been struck by the
way I had spoken kindly of my ex during my talk. I replied that age gives you the distance to
develop some perspective and that sometimes you realize that the other person isn’t the only
asshole in your story. He said that he had meant to comment that I had been compassionate
towards her, but perhaps that was the Ken Oates version of being compassionate. In fact, I
was being compassionate, but being compassionate to her involved admitting to myself that I
was part of the problem. This brings up a point about compassion. Sometimes we conflate
compassion with love or kindness, but there is a reason there are different words for these
concepts. Love is warm and soft and fuzzy, and so is kindness. I could ignite a bomb of love
or kindness in this room and no one would get hurt. Compassion is from the Latin compatiwhich literally means, “to suffer with”. This word was chosen to translate the Pali word karuna
which is described as the desire to remove harm and suffering from others. Even in Pali it is
distinct from metta, which is the desire to bring about well being and happiness, and is
generally translated as “loving kindness”. This distinction appears in our precepts ceremony
as well, as we vow separately to refrain from harmful conduct—karuna and to cultivate
beneficial conduct—metta. Both of these are distinctly different from the concept of “pity” or
feeling sorry for someone. Compassion is like those little down feathers inside the coats and
vests we all like so much in the Pacific Northwest. Down can be soft, but there is a sharp end
to the quill that can be irritating and sometimes downright hurt. Compassion has sharp edges
and points hidden inside the warm fuzzies. Love and kindness catch someone who is falling to
protect them from pain. Compassion sometimes lets them fall so they learn not to stumble in
the future. Catching them would be metta, but letting them fall might be karuna. Love and
kindness intervene to stop self destructive behavior, while sometimes compassion just watches
to prevent serious injury while letting the person hit rock bottom and figure out for themselves
that they need to stop. Sometimes being compassionate irritates or cuts the ego that thinks
you’re separate, that somehow you are being good TO someone else, like there is an us and
them. Sometimes the sharp bit cuts the person to whom you are extending compassion. The
hurt can be necessary in either case. So, while being compassionate, be aware that it isn’t
always easy, and you might get hurt, suffer or realize uncomfortable truths about yourself.
More importantly be aware that in extending compassion to others, you might inflict pain on
them, or allow them to suffer temporarily. Try to be skillful, try to use the soft end of the feather
and keep the sharp end pointed at yourself, but you might inadvertently use the sharp end, and
in some cases the sharp end may be what’s necessary.
Thank you for listening to my ramblings today and during the rest of Practice Period. I hope I
have not led you astray.
