This recording was about as much a pensive self-care/processing exploration as any kind of philosophical analysis, but there are some good ponderings in here without many real answers. I hope that it will be of value to others who are also stumbling along the Way of the Hermit/Sage.
Philosophy Riffing | Heartbreak | Lack of anger, Chöd, the Hermit, Truth, and Kindness
09 Feb 2022 Leave a comment
in Anger, Buddhism, Philosophy Riffing, Presence, Tarot Tags: Chöd, Compassion, Dainin Katagiri, Emptiness, Existentialism, Heidegger, Narratives, Sartre, Spiritual Materialism, Stoicism, Tao Te Ching, The Dhammapada
Heartbreak | Poetry for a Pulverized Heart
04 Feb 2022 Leave a comment
in Heartbreak, Poetry Tags: Being-time, Buddhism, Change, Chöd, Dōgen, Emptiness, Healing, Slogan Practice, Tao Te Ching, Taoism, The Heart Sutra
I’ve wanted to explore the topic of heartbreak and healing through a spiritual lens by riffing on a few of my favorite spiritual texts and trying to make them into some heartfelt poetry. This will be an attempt at that.
Form is emptiness.
Emptiness is form.
Form is nothing other than emptiness.
Emptiness is nothing other than form.
Love is nothing other than heartbreak.
Heartbreak is nothing other than love.
The arising of love is the flux that also flows out into its absence.
With gain is loss. With attachment is separation.
All such dharmas, every dharma, the entirety of the ten thousand things,
Each, no more substantial than dreams.
Each as empty – impermanent and without a Self, an identity that lasts.
As such: “Slogan 2. Regard all dharmas as dreams”.
Each can pop and be gone in the blink of an eye.
Even a life can.
The pulverized heart – pulverized: something crushed into powder: pulver.
It is perhaps the greatest emptiness.
A flux of confusion, hurt, memory, despair, hopelessness,
And perhaps, the last reverberations of a beat:
A small echo of the past and a yearning for it to grow back into life.
None of it solid. None of it stable.
Complete emotional rawness.
Potential opening for vulnerable wisdom – a being-here to sit with.
Form is emptiness.
Emptiness is form.
There is no love. No heartbreak. No connection. No rupture. No gain. No loss. No joy. No grief. No healing. No hurt. No learning. No forgetting. No path. No resolution.
All of it, gone, gone, beyond gone, completely beyond the concept of gone.
And yet…
Form is form. In each moment, just this – the entire universe is this present moment.
Emptiness is emptiness. The goings and comings are being-time; time-being.
We misunderstand them because we don’t understand the beat of time.
For love to last, effort must be put in – the consistency that is accomplished through change.
Be water, my friend.
Seeing clearly is sitting without attachment.
It’s cutting through the grasping onto form, emptiness, and any arising.
It’s severing the ties that hold us to our devils: all being creations of mind.
When heartbreak arises, cut through the narratives, justifications, and demons of ego.
When love arises, cut through the narratives, justifications, and demons of ego.
As should be remembered:
“Flowers fall even though we love them. Weeds grow even though we dislike them.”
Just this.
For reference, this free-form poetry is riffing hard on The Heart Sutra, Dogen’s Genjokoan from his Shobogenzo, some ideas from Mahayana Buddhism in general, particularly the 8 worldly concerns (gain and loss being two of them), The Tao Te Ching, the 52 slogans from the 7 points of mind training (Lojong) in Tibetan Buddhism, and Machik Lapdrön’s The Great Bundle of Precepts (the founder of Chöd and an absolutely radical female monk from the Middle Ages – highly suggested reading).
To end, I’d like to quote three poetic passages from Addiss and Lombardo’s as well as Red Pine’s translations of The Tao Te Ching, as I find them absolutely beautiful and inspirational, and I feel they speak to this problem of duality in experience and how to behave as a Sage who gets to the fundamental aspect of doing well without getting caught in the self-involved pain of trying to jump only from gain to gain to gain to gain.
Recognize beauty and ugliness is born.
Recognize good and evil is born.Is and Isn’t produce each other.
Hard depends on easy,
Long is tested by short,
High is determined by low,
Sound is harmonized by voice
After is followed by before.Therefore the Sage is devoted to non-action.
Moves without teaching,
Creates ten thousand things without instruction,
Lives but does not own,
Acts but does not presume,
Accomplishes without taking credit.When no credit is taken,
Tao Te Ching – trans. Addiss and Lombardo; chapter 2
Accomplishment endures.
7
Heaven is eternal and Earth is immortal
the reason they’re eternal and immortal
is because they don’t live for themselves
hence they can live forever
sages therefore pull themselves back
and end up in front
put themselves outside
and end up safe
is it not because of their selflessness
whatever they seek they find8
The best are like water
Lao-Tzu’s TaoTeChing – trans. Red Pine; chapters 7 and 8
bringing help to all
without competing
choosing what others avoid
they thus approach the Tao
dwelling with earth
thinking with depth
helping with kindness
speaking with honesty
governing with peace
working with skill
and moving with time
and because they don’t compete
they aren’t maligned
Reiki: The Five Precepts (Gokai – 五 戒) – 4th Precept: Actualization
31 Aug 2018 1 Comment
in Buddhism, Practice, Presence, Spiritual Path, Taoism, Usui's Five Precepts, Usui's Reiki Tags: Actualization, Compassion, Dōgen, Tao Te Ching, Upaya, Water, Wu wei
Just for today:
Don’t hold on to anger
Don’t focus on worry
Honor all those who came before
Work hard on self-improvement
Be kind to all living things
– Reiki Center App, Windows PhoneNow:
Peace
Faith
Gratitude
Actualization
Compassion
– My shortened mantra of the precepts
It’s been a couple years since the last entry in this series. To be honest, this current post daunted me, and at the time, I put it off as I had a lot of other ideas to write. However, my reiki posts have resonated a lot with followers of this site. There are regularly many who read these posts, and for them, I will continue discussing the last two precepts of Usui-sama’s practice. May this help guide them with their own engagement with the path.
The fourth precept is usually translated as something along the lines of “work hard” or “work diligently”. This has always seemed the clunkiest of the precepts to me. The term “work” seems like an earthy, money-driven concept, or one of bodily toil, rather than commitment to spiritual improvement. In this, I merely observe from my own perspective — outlining my own understanding and associated concepts with the term “work”. It may or may not be lighter or heavier of a concept for you, but I have a sense that there are many who would share my hesitance at this translation.
So what do we make of this? An engaged practice is difficult. It is work in that sense. We could think of this then more as: practice diligently. Ane what brings diligence to a Buddhist practice (recall that Usui was a Tendai monk)? Mindfulness, commitment, continuing to try moment by moment throughout the day without judging yourself for when you come up short. Instead, you merely refocus on the task at hand, when your mind or attention wanders. Thus, we could rephrase this as: practice mindfully with engagement and an open heart.
If we add one more piece of understanding to this, we’ll get to what I mean by “actualization” in my shortened form. Buddhism speaks often of upaya — skillful means. It’s an engagement that fits the situation, responding to it with connection and compassion. This responsiveness does not necessarily fit some greater theoretical technique handed down by a master; rather, it’s a pure presence of being one with the situation. I find this to shed light on the related (in my view) idea of wu wei from Taoism. Wu wei is often translated as inaction, non-action, or not doing. However, in delving into Taoism, it becomes clear that it’s better understood as action that conforms with the natural flow of situations; it’s in this sense that we can get closer to being like water, as Lao Tzu counsels us to do in an early chapter.
“The best are like water” – Lao Tzu (trans. Red Pine)
“Actualization” is a term that I got from a translation of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō from the famous passage Genjo-koan . I was struck by an enigmatic passage at the end in which a monk explains the nature of wind being everywhere around the world while fanning himself. This is the true koan aspect of this chapter, and I honestly cannot say that I’m certain I understand it still. However, I take from it that the situation at hand is a hot summer’s day, and though in the abstract, the wind is an ongoing thing of the world that will never end and goes everywhere, in the concrete of this moment, the summer heat and still calls for the engaged action of fanning. If we take this metaphorically, our lives come up with moment after moment for awareness, connection, and compassion, but this requires us being present and mindful within each of those moments, not grasping onto any ideology or conceptual system with our heads in the clouds; rather, here, in this moment, we can be open and responsive instead of active (which I think of as controlling events to meet one’s own ego-driven desires). This is what it takes to actualize, and in actualizing, one responds to each moment — this is that diligent practice above.
May this discussion bring you new understanding of the precepts and how to practice them.
Gassho!
Previous Reiki: The Five Precepts Post – 3rd Precept: Gratitude
For those compelled by that connection with wu wei and water from the Tao Te Ching, here is chapter 8 from Red Pine’s translation. Read this with all the ideas of this post in mind; it resonates well with them all:
The best are like water
bringing help to all
without competing
choosing what others avoid
thus they approach the Tao
dwelling with earth
thinking with depth
helping with kindness
speaking with honesty
governing with peace
working with skill
and moving with time
and because they don’t compete
they aren’t maligned
Giving Heart (Part 2)
08 Nov 2016 Leave a comment
in Compassion, Empowerment, Growth, Warrior's Path Tags: Buddha, Buddhism, Lao Tzu, Marcus Aurelius, Philosophy, Stoicism, Tao Te Ching, Taoism, The Dhammapada
Our worries may zoom around the state of the world. “What happens if the economy plummets? If the ozone layer keeps decreasing? If we have more anthrax attacks? If terrorists take over the country? If we lose our civil liberties fighting terrorism?” Here, our creative writing ability leads to fantastic scenarios that may or may not happen, but regardless, we manage to work ourselves into a state of unprecedented despair. This, in turn, often leads to raging anger at the powers that be or alternatively, to apathy, simply thinking that since everything is rotten, there’s no use doing anything. In either case, we’re so gloomy that we neglect to act constructively in ways that remedy difficulties and create goodness.
Thubten Chodron, Taming the Mind, page 129
In Giving Heart (Part 1), I wrote about the importance of taking up your political privilege to vote for the candidate who will protect life through fighting climate change, social injustice, and other inequities. I argued that this is important and an act of affirmation rather than one of cynicism. This is how to get beyond thinking in terms of lesser evils.
Today is election day in the US. If you’re reading this, go back to the first entry and think about it. Then, go vote. This is important. You’re extremely lucky to live in a time and society in which you have the privilege to vote. Go do so with the bigger picture in mind.
However, in this post, I’m transitioning to give heart from the perspective of the quote above as promised in the last post; this post will be about how to “create goodness” in the interactions of your life to move beyond hoping for abstract ideals and leaders to provide the world you want to live in. You can do your own part.
You are always here, already in a world with other people and other life. What can you do to be at harmony with them and show them kindness, even in the smallest interactions? This is the question that should animate your interactions. However, it doesn’t mean being a pushover. Sometimes, the kindest possible thing is showing someone else how they are being selfish or harmful. Nor does it mean intellectually analyzing every choice you make; rather, respond to life holistically, trying to do so with openness and compassion. Try practicing that, and you’ll find your place in the unity that the poem points out: radiating wisdom and justice in your life rather than being lost in the deluded dreams of waiting for it to be realized in some system or political ideology.
As really analyzing this topic would take a lot more discussion, I’ll leave you with that question — “What can you do to be at harmony with the other people and other life you live with, with the universe, and show them kindness, even in the smallest interactions?” — to point you along your own way, and I’ll add a few quotes from various sources to inspire you in your engaged practice.
From the Tao Te Ching (Trans. Red Pine)
Thus the rule of the sage
empties the mind
but fills the stomach
weakens the will
but strengthens the bones
This excerpt from Verse 3 inspires me, always. Ancient commentators take the full stomach as sated desires – ruling people in such a way that they aren’t driven by yearning that leads them to steal, harm, and trample. There is definitely validity to this, but isn’t this so to a certain extent because the sage makes sure that others are fed and healthy? Isn’t the most simple compassion a taking care of others’ well-being in the most basic ways? Not that I’m exhorting you to sacrifice yourself, enable others, or only care about creature comforts, but there is a basic concern that could extend as wisdom through our engagement with others.
From the Dhammapada (Trans. Easwaran)
For hatred does not cease by hatred at any time:
hatred ceases by love. This is an unalterable law.There are those who forget that death will come to all.
For those who remember, quarrels come to an end. (Verses 5 and 6)
These lines come in the first chapter after twinned verses which explain that selfish thoughts and actions lead to suffering whereas selfless actions lead to joy. These lines both sum up the point and show that our time in life is short — there’s no time to lose in beginning to shape our selfless path of compassion right now.
Avoid all evil, cultivate the good, purify your mind: this sums up the teaching of the Buddhas. (Verse 183)
This summation is cryptic in its advice but when remembered in line with cultivating the path of selflessness, it becomes succinct and practical.
From Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations (Trans. Robin Hard)
8.27. We have three relationships: the first to the vessel that encloses us, the second to the divine cause, the source of all that befalls every being, and the third to those who live alongside us.
This is key to all of these perspectives, I believe. The Buddha’s story is not one where asceticism is the answer: rather he reaches enlightenment after realizing that eating and nourishing his body is important too. Lao Tzu points out how feeding the bodies of all is important for the ruler. Last, Marcus Aurelius points out that we have to take care of ourselves, recognize our place in the big picture of what is, and realize that there are other people with whom we coexist — another relationship that deserves our care. All three of these sources would reverberate with this last set of reminders, and we might even question, to go very Buddhist, where the differences in these relationships arise. There may just be the one relationship of taking care, plain and simple.
May this give you heart to bring compassionate engagement to yourself, others, and life/the Universe as a whole.
Gassho!
On the Way 
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