What Does It Mean To Die?

On Friday, we commemorated the passing –Parinirvana – of the historical, flesh-and-blood Buddha, Prince Siddartha of the Shakya tribe.  The word “nirvana” translates literally as “blown out,” and is often likened to a metaphorical candle.  But that would be to miss the point of our true being.  What is blown out in nirvana is not light, but heat, the heat of passions.  Our Nepalese prince was one of the few known historical cases of a person who survived the extinction of greed, hate and delusion and lived to tell about it.  Most of us just go on to the next karmic classroom, to again graduate or flunk. 

So, the physical body of the prince succumbed to death, the ultimate impermanence.  So what?  The real lesson of Parinirvana is that 2,500 years later, the understanding – the enlightenment – of that prince is very, very much alive in every single person who makes any effort whatsoever to reduce suffering and to be kind, compassionate, joyful and tranquil, even for one second every day. 

To say that the Buddha is dead is silly.  Of course the body isn’t sustainable – “all conditioned things are of a nature to decay.”  And there will come a time for all of us when the light fades and we know it won’t come back on.  What to do then?  The Buddha, in his last breath, was direct and clear on this point:  “Be a lamp unto yourself.  Strive on untiringly.”

Who Am I?

On Wednesday, we will celebrate the traditional birthday of Bodhidharma, a quasi-historical figure who may -- or may not -- have been many things: an Indian prince, the bearer of Buddhism from India to China, the confounder of Emperor Wu.  Third in line for his father's realm, Bodhidharma didn't have much chance at inheritance.  So, he studied and traveled and faced a wall for a few years.  And in that flexibly vagrant life, he was able to become what was needed in the moment, not as a chameleon, but as a witness to the cries and suffering of the world.  Before the Emperor, he refused to define himself.  "I don't know," was all he said, eerily mirroring the response of another spiritual adept five centuries earlier who said to another prefect, "That's what you say I am."

It's interesting that the first question we ask new acquaintances, perhaps even before we know their name, is "What do you do?"  As if occupation were identity.  We confidently identify several "I's" that are "me."  Parent, worker, student, child, retiree.  The more, the better.  Proof that we are somebody because we are somebodies.  (Don't ask where the "I" is in that agglomeration.)

Now, imagine answering What do you do? with, "I listen to your inmost request and become what is needed to support you to fulfill it."  Well, that would certainly change the conversation, wouldn't it?  We might find that the party had suddenly moved to a far corner of the room.  Having someone offer to be your mirror isn't exactly the basis for chit-chat.

Bodhidharma knew that Emperor Wu needed to be told that his temples and pious good works were not his true nature.  In refusing to define himself, Bodhidharma suggested that perhaps the Emperor, too, might take a break from his identity.  But the Emperor did not understand, and missed a golden opportunity to find the sacred within himself.

"The goal of those who practice is freedom from appearances," Bodhidharma says in his Wake-up Sermon. "Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness."   Appearances involve a small number of tightly-held, carefully-crafted, deeply-cherished "I's."  Awareness gives the capacity to end the suffering thereof.

The Practice of Life

Practice is an interesting word.  It connotes, ambiguously, either preparation or implementation, rehearsal or performance.  There is practice for (concert) and practice of (law, medicine).  We call what we do “Buddhist practice.”  But is it preparation for, or implementation of … what?  Compassion?  Kindness?  Empathy? Equanimity?  And are we already those things, or do we need to practice them first lest our enlightenment be judged?    

Next week a rather large number of people will voluntarily put themselves into “practice,” not to settle the matter of its ambiguity, but to settle themselves squarely in its maw.  First, the winter practice period begins.  A ten-week leap for both residents and commuters into the practice of not knowing.  Soon thereafter, a non-residential program (Establishing the Path of Practice) begins.  It lasts a whole year.

Why do this to yourself?  Why burden an already over-burdened life with more commitments, more study, more investigation of the places that scare us (either because they are too dark or too light)?  Perhaps because there’s an inkling that so far in this life, we have been practicing for.  Practicing for the time when the right partner comes along, when we’ll reach the executive suite, when we’ll have enough money, when the kids have moved out (or back in), when we won't have to be scared/worried/angry anymore.  In other words, we’ve begun to suspect that in living a life of what if, we’re missing a lot of what is. 

And Buddhist practice is nothing if not a relentless practice of what is.  It’s not a practice for.  It’s a practice of.  Our life is not a rehearsal, it’s a choice:  tighten the karmic knots, or loosen them.  And only in unflinching intimacy with our every moment can we apprehend the consequences of what we’re doing. 

“If we don’t use our daily life as a practice, nothing is ever going to change.”

(Ani Tenzin Palmo)

Longest Night

Perhaps the Winter Solstice wasn't the longest night in our personal 2012.  Maybe it was when a loved one died, when a child was sick, when a relationship withered, when something precious was lost or broken.  For the residents of Newtown, their longest night came a full week before the official astronomical event.

The wisdom and the comfort of the Winter Solstice is that it's nature's own reminder of the intimacy of light and dark -- like the front and back foot in walking, says Sekito's poem.  We'd find it silly to believe that only the front foot makes progress, especially since the propulsion and momentum come from the back foot.  Just so, our lives don't move at all unless light and dark are both present, waxing and waning to their own rhythm regardless of our calendared highs and lows.

Zen Master Dōgēn said not to call winter the beginning of spring.  But maybe he was wrong.  For as much as winter's long night connotes death and decay, it also invites rest and surrender to the nourishment of the dark, rich earth -- without which spring's exuberant creativity couldn't happen at all.

Eighth Day, Twelfth Month

Rohatsu Sesshin ended Saturday.  The name means “eighth day, twelfth month” – the traditional date nearly 2,500 years ago that a mid-life Indian prince woke up to all those Buddhist mainstays that we now take for granted (whether or not we understand them): suffering, ignorance, impermanence, emptiness, no-self.

The temptation, borne perhaps of our acquisitive culture, is to believe that the prince got something, and that if we practice hard enough and long enough, we’ll get it, too.  After all, he was very clear that enlightenment is the birthright of every sentient being.   But if we read the fine print of the sutras, including the Buddha’s own words, they are equally clear on one important point that we tend to overlook in our effort to get enlightened:

A Buddha is an absence, not a presence. 

This doesn’t mean the prince ceased to exist on that morning so long ago.  And it doesn’t mean that we will cease to exist when we wake up -- which is, I suspect, a major fear we have about enlightenment, however much we want it.  I won’t be me anymore!

Well, of course not.  Because what’s absent from an awakened being is greed, hate, delusion and 105 other defilements.  And since we tend to overly-define ourselves in terms of our suffering, it’s our definitions of ourselves that are at stake.  We don’t get to keep them when we wake up. 

So, we do things like sesshins for two reasons:  to practice dropping our stories (delusions) again and again, moment after moment, for days on end.  And in the space thus created to imagine what we might be like without them.  Daring, perhaps, to believe that we actually are kind, compassionate, empathetic, tranquil.  Because we’ve made some space for them to move in.  Because we like who we are when they do.  Because they are what our heart calls “I”.

500 Lifetimes

On Saturday night, we will enter Rohatsu Sesshin, the seven-day sitting that celebrates Shakyamuni’s enlightenment.  It is said that on that penultimate night, Mara the Evil One threw at our hero (as tricksters do in most religions) all manner of temptations.  And in my favorite version of that story, the thirtysomething prince finally says to Mara, “I know who you are … you’re me.”

Exeunt delusions.

Fast forward a dozen centuries.  The old man-fox confesses to Baizhang that he guessed wrongly about how a Buddha relates to cause and effect.  Correct answer: An enlightened one is not blind to cause and effect. 

So, how long will it take us to understand that we are the cause and the effect?  That everything we put out comes back, not sent by a wrathful Judge, but simply the natural consequence of interconnectedness.  (If you doubt that concept, consider for a moment that the iron atoms in your body were made in an exploding supernova so long ago you can’t even comprehend the timeline.  You’ve had more than 500 lifetimes, by a factor inconceivable.)

The celebration of Rohatsu, then, isn’t about someone else, a long time ago in a land far, far away.  The iron atoms of enlightenment – acceptance of things just the way they are – have been available to us for … ever.  And because of that, we know in our hearts who Shakyamuni Buddha was.  He’s us. 

Hold-Music Practice

My father died suddenly this week.  There's nothing like a heart-wrenching change in our personal universe to test our practice.  The next morning, I had made a dozen calls by 9:00 a.m.  I spent almost an hour on hold with various agencies.  Kinda hard to muster up loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and (especially) patience while those utterly annoying hold tunes are repeating for the umpteenth time, loudly.  (I'll never understand why the funeral home's hold music was heavy metal.)

But at the end of each hold, the person who took my call was, without exception, kind, compassionate, sympathetic (sans joy, of course) and patient.  And in their practice, I found my own.  They were generous - the foremost perfection (paramita) - in the way that is most helpful: they gave me courage not to soldier on, but to feel what I was feeling.  They met me there, every one of them.

The Catholic priest who happened to be the only chaplain on duty at the hospital when I arrived, fresh off the plane with my luggage still in tow, looked me in the eyes not as we normally do in conversation, but in a way that reached all the way to my heart.  I told him I was a Zen priest.  He responded just above a whisper, "Then you know how to do this."

Ours is an all-the-time practice.  Not just for when things are hard, or easy.  Not just for those times when we can find our breath.  I've forgotten how to breathe many times in the past few days, mostly because my heart can't stand to have anything going on around it right now.  I'm not capable of zazen at the moment.  But that's OK.  I don't have to do the practice, because I've discovered that the practice is doing me.  It's right here.  It doesn't leave.  It doesn't judge.  It doesn't fix.  It just holds me.  And if I've learned nothing else in 20 years of practice, I now know that I've learned to surrender fully to that embrace, and therein find the generosity to look death in the face and see it for what it is. 

Hunger

Last Wednesday evening, we fed the hungry ghosts in a ceremony called Sejiki.  We invited them in.  The Abbess made food for them.  We tried to make the Buddha Hall safe so they could come forth and eat without fear.  We put up images they could relate to.  We covered up the usual spiritual icons.  We chanted continuously for half an hour, calling them to feast.  We read their names.  All for the sake of a fairy tale, befitting Halloween.  They aren't really here, these hungry ghosts.  You can't prove their existence by anything approaching the scientific method, so they must not exist.

And yet ... have you ever felt that hole, somewhere in your chest, that seems bottomless and unfillable?  Ever had your heart cry out for solace, understanding, companionship, answers?  Ever wondered why your worth is measured not by how nourished you are, but by how much is on your plate?

Can we truly say we're not hungry?  Can we truly say that we recognize and acknowledge with deep gratitude the nourishment that surrounds us all the time?  Ironically (as many sutras point out), the root cause of spiritual hunger is stinginess -- clinging to I and mine, protecting what's ours, and clearly delineating it from what's theirs.  Fortunately, the sutras also offer a remedy: the antidote to greed is generosity, which usually connotes giving.  But there is also a generosity in receiving, in accepting the nourishment in every moment, in remembering to say Thank You, in eating what's offered. 

In his Pure Standards for the Zen Community, Dōgen wrote:

If you do not have a limited heart, you will have boundless fortune.

In 2012, we might say:

Let's stop trying to put everything on our tray, and instead sit down and eat.