On our altar is an image of Saraswati (Benzaiten in Japanese). She figures prominently in an important teaching of the Buddha called The Sutra of Golden Light. This sutra has a long and interesting history in the Tendai school. It was recited on Mt. Hiei with some frequency as a means to bring stability and peace to the nation and its people, in an immediate sense as well as a durable spiritual sense.
I would like to encourage you to read the Sutra of Golden Light, recite it, and if you like copy it out by hand. If you approach this practice with an attitude of bodhicitta, the yearning to be of ultimate benefit to all beings who suffer, then great benefit cannot be avoided.
Thanks to the diligent efforts and generosity of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, you can download the Sutra of Golden Light for free at this link.
May the merits ease the sorrows of this troubled world.
***
If you are interested, you can find other reading recommendations here.
25 August 2010
24 August 2010
Contemplation: A Beam of Light
After putting the instructions on how to practice contemplation into practice, take this as your object of contemplation:
(from Yuan Wu's commentaries in The Blue Cliff Record, page 475).
May all beings benefit!
Originally, right where you stand, there's this beam of light; it's just that your use of it is dark.
(from Yuan Wu's commentaries in The Blue Cliff Record, page 475).
May all beings benefit!
23 August 2010
Fundamental Guidance on Practice: Taking the Goal as the Path
This is from the 2009 Buddhist Text Society translation of the Surangama Sutra. Shakyamuni Buddha is speaking to Ananda, who has asked for advice on how to transform everyday experience into the stuff of enlightenment:
When you hear me use the phrase "taking the goal as the path," this is what I am referring to: this practice of recognizing and trusting the enlightened potential within ourselves as a path. The goal of enlightenment and the practice of enlightenment are of the same nature, and according to this understanding, identical in function. The Buddha continues his explanation with an analogy:
Our meditation routine here at Great River Ekayana Sangha mirrors this two part process: we begin with Shamatha, which calms and settles the mind into clarity, and then proceed with Vipashyana or the discernment of the real, intended to clear away the nonsense.
With effort in practice, confidence builds; with confidence in our practice, our practice gains in power. This is a path of trust in that we must learn to trust the only thing about ourselves that is absolutely trustworthy, and then trust it absolutely. Let us direct our efforts accordingly.
you must pull out the root of death and rebirth and rely on that pure and perfect nature that neither comes into being nor ceases to be. Use the purity of your true nature to make disappear the distinction between your original state of enlightenment and the illusory state of what comes into being and ceases to be. The original enlightened understanding, which neither comes into being nor ceases to be, must be the basis of your practice. Then you will attain the awakening that will be the result of your practice.
When you hear me use the phrase "taking the goal as the path," this is what I am referring to: this practice of recognizing and trusting the enlightened potential within ourselves as a path. The goal of enlightenment and the practice of enlightenment are of the same nature, and according to this understanding, identical in function. The Buddha continues his explanation with an analogy:
The process may be compared to the settling of turbid water. If you keep it undisturbed in a container so that it is completely still and quiet, the sand and silt in it will settle naturally, and the water will become clear. This may be compared to the initial stage of subduing the afflictions that arise from transitory perceptions of objects. When the sand and silt have been removed so that only clear water remains, then fundamental ignorance has been eliminated forever. When the water is quite pure and clear, nothing that may happen will be a cause of affliction. All will be in accord with the pure and wondrous attributes of nirvana.(pages 174-175)
Our meditation routine here at Great River Ekayana Sangha mirrors this two part process: we begin with Shamatha, which calms and settles the mind into clarity, and then proceed with Vipashyana or the discernment of the real, intended to clear away the nonsense.
With effort in practice, confidence builds; with confidence in our practice, our practice gains in power. This is a path of trust in that we must learn to trust the only thing about ourselves that is absolutely trustworthy, and then trust it absolutely. Let us direct our efforts accordingly.
17 August 2010
Contemplation: Firm Resolve
After reviewing the method we use for practicing contemplation in our sangha, take this as your object of contemplation:
(Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, Padmakara Translation, p. 169)
May all beings enjoy the merits of this practice.
To satisfy the needs of beings
Dwelling in the ten directions, to the margins of the sky,
May I reflect in every deed
The perfect exploits of Manjushri.
And now as long as space endures,
As long as there are beings to be found,
May I continue likewise to remain
To drive away the sorrows of the world.
(Shantideva, The Way of the Bodhisattva, Padmakara Translation, p. 169)
May all beings enjoy the merits of this practice.
16 August 2010
Just to be clear about this...
My comments here on this blog are intended to be useful and helpful for people interested in putting Tendai Buddhism into practice in an everyday way outside of Japan.
Any and all mistakes you might find are my own responsibility, and do not reflect on my teachers or the teachings. I appreciate it when they are brought to my attention so I can set them right.
Thank you for reading and joining in. Now, back to our regularly scheduled bodhi...
Any and all mistakes you might find are my own responsibility, and do not reflect on my teachers or the teachings. I appreciate it when they are brought to my attention so I can set them right.
Thank you for reading and joining in. Now, back to our regularly scheduled bodhi...
Buddhism with no Buddha?
Some students express an unease with the concept of Buddhahood, and wonder if Buddhism would still work without it. My comments here are intended to ease that anxiety: specifically, to encourage people to quit worrying and love the Buddha, specifically the Buddha-potential within you.
Consider an analogy.
I have some friends whom I trust and respect. These friends have never lied to me but their ways sometimes confuse me. For instance, they insist they are from a place called Denmark. I have never been to Denmark and I have no physical evidence that Denmark exists. All I have to rely on is the testimony of my friends, some recordings of the very vowelly Danish language, some butter and furniture and shoes that may have been designed by people from Denmark, some comments from Hamlet on the subject of rot: nothing hard and fast.
However, I have also come to understand that there is a way for me to see Denmark first hand. I will need to apply myself diligently to the task of swimming, sailing, or flying (three vehicles...); I may have to accept some formal practices that seem a bit bureaucratic; I may have to accept a temporary layover in an implausible bardo state such as Iceland or, worse, Heathrow; and I have to accept that my friends know the way. In short, I need to trust people who have more first-hand knowledge than I have, and I need to trust the guidebooks they suggest to me. Since I have an open invitation to visit Denmark and see for myself, what do I have to lose if I try?
Buddhahood is like Denmark in this analogy. (Danish readers: Find a different analogy.) It is not something you can get a handle on in ordinary terms. You need to experience it first hand, and in order to experience it, you need to put some trust in your guide and your friends. You have to take a chance on it. This means you must admit that you don't have all the answers before you start to learn. Beginner's mind! And as it happens, you will find as you proceed that you had the potential in you all along to visit this Denmark place, that Denmark is fundamentally the same place you have always been all along.
At first, putting your faith in the teachings of the Buddha means simply trusting that the Buddha is not lying to you, is not trying to pull a prank on you, is not trying to dupe you out of your money or embarrass you or anything else except to bring you over to his field of experience.
Consider an analogy.
I have some friends whom I trust and respect. These friends have never lied to me but their ways sometimes confuse me. For instance, they insist they are from a place called Denmark. I have never been to Denmark and I have no physical evidence that Denmark exists. All I have to rely on is the testimony of my friends, some recordings of the very vowelly Danish language, some butter and furniture and shoes that may have been designed by people from Denmark, some comments from Hamlet on the subject of rot: nothing hard and fast.
However, I have also come to understand that there is a way for me to see Denmark first hand. I will need to apply myself diligently to the task of swimming, sailing, or flying (three vehicles...); I may have to accept some formal practices that seem a bit bureaucratic; I may have to accept a temporary layover in an implausible bardo state such as Iceland or, worse, Heathrow; and I have to accept that my friends know the way. In short, I need to trust people who have more first-hand knowledge than I have, and I need to trust the guidebooks they suggest to me. Since I have an open invitation to visit Denmark and see for myself, what do I have to lose if I try?
Buddhahood is like Denmark in this analogy. (Danish readers: Find a different analogy.) It is not something you can get a handle on in ordinary terms. You need to experience it first hand, and in order to experience it, you need to put some trust in your guide and your friends. You have to take a chance on it. This means you must admit that you don't have all the answers before you start to learn. Beginner's mind! And as it happens, you will find as you proceed that you had the potential in you all along to visit this Denmark place, that Denmark is fundamentally the same place you have always been all along.
At first, putting your faith in the teachings of the Buddha means simply trusting that the Buddha is not lying to you, is not trying to pull a prank on you, is not trying to dupe you out of your money or embarrass you or anything else except to bring you over to his field of experience.
12 August 2010
Why so many strange and exotic things to do?
Our school of Buddhism is characterized by a diversity of practices. In this sense, Tendai Buddhism is distinct from some of the newer schools of East Asian Buddhism, such as Nichiren-shu, Soto Zen, or the Pure Land schools, which primarily emphasize one practice as appropriate to this time and place. Tendai is in practical terms fundamentally eclectic, although this eclecticism is supported and held together doctrinally. One might even say that the Tendai doctrine of Ekayana as presented in the Lotus Sutra demands this kind of eclecticism: making a spectrum of practices available to students as suitable to the time, place, and person.
Tendai Buddhism traces its history to the Tian Tai school of China. Tian Tai doctrine, as presented in the teachings of the great master Chih-i, was the first properly Chinese intervention into the Buddhist tradition. This was a matter of necessity. Before and while the Buddhist cultural matrix collapsed in India, Buddhist texts and teachers streamed into China and the Himalaya. There was a kind of chaos: an intense diversity of positions, papers, preachings, practices abounded, and it was not easy for the Chinese to make sense of it all in the absence of a longstanding indigenous Buddhist tradition such as the one that had prevailed in India.
Chih-i offered a systematic explanation for all the Buddhist texts he knew of. Specifically, he organized the Buddhist teachings he knew of in China according to an imputed pedagogy on the part of Shakyamuni: first teaching the Avatamsaka Sutra, but finding it too profound for the capacity of the students around him at the time; then advancing a series of provisional teachings intended to develop those students into fighting shape and prepare them to understand the full and authoritative teachings; finally, presenting the Lotus Sutra, which in Chih-i's mind offered the complete and absolute teaching of the Buddha. (This is a very simplified summary.)
From there, Chih-i explicated the Lotus Sutra in particular ways. I will come back to this matter in the future; for now, what is important to understand is Chih-i's insistence on an all-encompassing, encyclopedic understanding of the Buddhist cultural life, taking it all in and honoring it as appropriate to particular situations. This reflects the Lotus Sutra method of upaya, or skillful means.
This is how Chih-i is reported to have taught just this point:
(quoted in Daniel B Stevenson, "Samadhi in Early T'ian-T'ai Buddhism," Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, pages 85-86.)
In short, one of the reasons Tendai today looks the way it does has to do with an accumulation of means to help people with different needs, like a hospital with a cardiac wing, a renal ward, a trauma unit, and a cafeteria to heal the hungry. We spend significant time working on method and doctrine and debate in order to prepare ourselves for intelligent practice.
One may object that just sitting and not thinking is a legitimate Buddhist meditational practice. Point taken. Sitting there like an idiot is one respectable practice, one of many, but one need not be an idiot about it, nor assume that just sitting is the right medicine for everyone you meet or even for yourself at all times.
One may object that certain Buddhist practices more closely resemble cultural hanging-on from Tibet or Japan or Korea rather than authentic Buddhist teachings, where "authentic Buddhist" means "directly from the mouth of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni." This is a form of back-to-the-text, back-to-the-source Protestantism. I was not present when Shakyamuni taught the Lotus Sutra, or any of the other teachings; historians debate the provenance of this or that document. The broader question has to do with how a particular practice is integrated with a Buddhist view, how it works vis a vis Buddhist view, and how it can help bring some relief to a troubled situation. Even if you do not see how a practice such as nembutsu can be useful to you in your situation, you have no way of knowing if it will be helpful to you or not. Your teacher may have some insight into this, so you might as well ask for guidance from a doctor with some experience healing sick individuals such as yourself.
Tendai Buddhism traces its history to the Tian Tai school of China. Tian Tai doctrine, as presented in the teachings of the great master Chih-i, was the first properly Chinese intervention into the Buddhist tradition. This was a matter of necessity. Before and while the Buddhist cultural matrix collapsed in India, Buddhist texts and teachers streamed into China and the Himalaya. There was a kind of chaos: an intense diversity of positions, papers, preachings, practices abounded, and it was not easy for the Chinese to make sense of it all in the absence of a longstanding indigenous Buddhist tradition such as the one that had prevailed in India.
Chih-i offered a systematic explanation for all the Buddhist texts he knew of. Specifically, he organized the Buddhist teachings he knew of in China according to an imputed pedagogy on the part of Shakyamuni: first teaching the Avatamsaka Sutra, but finding it too profound for the capacity of the students around him at the time; then advancing a series of provisional teachings intended to develop those students into fighting shape and prepare them to understand the full and authoritative teachings; finally, presenting the Lotus Sutra, which in Chih-i's mind offered the complete and absolute teaching of the Buddha. (This is a very simplified summary.)
From there, Chih-i explicated the Lotus Sutra in particular ways. I will come back to this matter in the future; for now, what is important to understand is Chih-i's insistence on an all-encompassing, encyclopedic understanding of the Buddhist cultural life, taking it all in and honoring it as appropriate to particular situations. This reflects the Lotus Sutra method of upaya, or skillful means.
This is how Chih-i is reported to have taught just this point:
Someone asked: "In [applying] the true discernment of the Middle Way, through the very act of unifying one's mind, [both] the practice and its function are complete. What need is there to make so many [distinctions] such as the four kinds of samadhi, the application of [discernment] to good and evil [circumstances], or [meditating] amidst the twelve [different forms of] activity? When the water is muddy, the pearl is concealed. When the wind blows heavily, waves beat on the surface. What use could [such concerns] have for realizing lucidity and calm?" Chih-i replied: "[Your attitude] is analogous to a poor person who, upon obtaining a little advantage, considers it sufficient and doesn't care to do even better. If you use only one form of mental discernment, what happens when you are confronted with all sorts of [different] mental states? In such a case you will be at a loss in your own practice. If you [consider] trying to use [this one method] to train others, the spiritual endowments of others are all different from one another. One person's afflictions are in themselves infinite, how much more so [the afflictions of] many people! [Let us say] there is a master of medicines who gathers all varieties of medicines to remove all the different types of illness. Then a person [comes along] who suffers from one particular illness and needs one particular medicine to cure that illness and things it strange that the doctor should carry so many other [useless] medicines [apart from the particular one he requires]. Your question is like this."
(quoted in Daniel B Stevenson, "Samadhi in Early T'ian-T'ai Buddhism," Traditions of Meditation in Chinese Buddhism, pages 85-86.)
In short, one of the reasons Tendai today looks the way it does has to do with an accumulation of means to help people with different needs, like a hospital with a cardiac wing, a renal ward, a trauma unit, and a cafeteria to heal the hungry. We spend significant time working on method and doctrine and debate in order to prepare ourselves for intelligent practice.
One may object that just sitting and not thinking is a legitimate Buddhist meditational practice. Point taken. Sitting there like an idiot is one respectable practice, one of many, but one need not be an idiot about it, nor assume that just sitting is the right medicine for everyone you meet or even for yourself at all times.
One may object that certain Buddhist practices more closely resemble cultural hanging-on from Tibet or Japan or Korea rather than authentic Buddhist teachings, where "authentic Buddhist" means "directly from the mouth of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni." This is a form of back-to-the-text, back-to-the-source Protestantism. I was not present when Shakyamuni taught the Lotus Sutra, or any of the other teachings; historians debate the provenance of this or that document. The broader question has to do with how a particular practice is integrated with a Buddhist view, how it works vis a vis Buddhist view, and how it can help bring some relief to a troubled situation. Even if you do not see how a practice such as nembutsu can be useful to you in your situation, you have no way of knowing if it will be helpful to you or not. Your teacher may have some insight into this, so you might as well ask for guidance from a doctor with some experience healing sick individuals such as yourself.
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