Buddha's wisdom

Welcome everybody. Hi, Clancy and Paul, nice to see you. Pretty quiet in the Shrine Room this evening, possibly to do with the England match that ended not very long ago. Though I hear we did win, so— I wanted to read a Mary Oliver poem, as much for the title as for the the poem itself. It's not very long. It's called "The Real Prayers Are Not the Words But the Attention That Comes First." The little hawk leaned sideways and tilted, rode the wind. Its eye at this distance looked like green glass. Its feet were the color of butter. Speed, obviously, was joy, but then so was the sudden slow circle it carved into the slightly silvery air, and the squaring of its shoulders, and the pulling into itself the long sharp-edged wings, and the fall into the grass where it tussled a moment like a bundle of brown leaves, and then again lifted itself into the air, that butter color clenched in order to hold a small still body, and it flew off as my mind sang out, 'Oh, all that loose blue rink of sky, where does it go to and why?' The real prayers are not the words but the attention. That comes first. So we'll pay attention as we go into meditation to our breath, to the sensations in our body-mind, not pushing anything away, not building anything up into something bigger, just noticing What's here from moment to moment. A, M, E, T, O, V, A, M, O, E, T, O, V, A, M, O, E, T, O. For refuge I go to the Buddha.

For refuge I go to the Buddha.

The one who is awake and full of love.

The one who is awake and full of love.

Namo Buddhaya.

Namo Buddhaya.

For refuge I go to the Dharma. For refuge I go to the Dharma, all that guides us to wisdom and compassion.

All that guides us to wisdom and compassion.

Namo Dharmaya.

Namo Dharmaya.

For refuge I go to the Sangha.

For refuge I go to the Sangha.

Those who live in the Buddha's light.

Those who live in the Buddha's light.

Namo Sangha. For refuge I go to the Earth, the holy ground of awakening. Namobumiye. With faith in the Four Refuges, and in light of my human tendencies, I pray that I may become aware— —of when I take life. Of when I take life.

I pray that I may become aware—

—of when I take what is not freely given. When I take what is not freely given. I pray that I may become aware— of when I fall into sexual misconduct— of my own falling to sexual misconduct—I pray that I may become aware—

I pray this time they've come away—

of what? When I fall into wrong speech—

oh no!

Fall into one's reach—I pray that I may become aware—that prayer does not make me go mad—of when I become intoxicated—when I have become intoxicated No blame. Be kind. Love everything.

Love everything.

Innumerable sentient beings, we vow to save them all. Inexhaustible are the Buddha's passions. We vow to transform them all.

Immeasurable are the Dharma teachings.

We vow to master them all. Infinite is the Buddha's way. We vow to fulfill it completely. I heard a story about Gandhi recently that I wanted to share with you. I heard it in— I read it in Jonathan Rosen's newsletter. Jonathan Rosen is a chess grandmaster whose newsletter I subscribe to. He luckily doesn't write very much about chess because I'm not that interested in it. He writes about lots of different things. And he was writing. He'd been to an embodied wisdom conference. I think that was how it was described. And the story he told about Gandhi, apparently he's getting onto a train and one of his sandals falls off, and he, without thinking really, flicks the other one off so it falls on the track beside it. And someone says, why did you— later someone says, why did you do that? And he said, well, I knew I'd lost the first sandal, but at least if somebody finds it, they'll find a pair now, um, and they can use them. And, and, uh, Jonathan was contrasting that, like, with other actions that Gandhi took where he sort of sat down and planned how are we going to respond to this, you know, how are we going to make a plan for independence or whatever it was. It's, um, it's spontaneous, it's loving kindness, it's moving without thought, really. And I've become— the more and the more and more years that I've practiced, I found myself becoming more and more curious about that sort of innate Wisdom is not touched upon much in the Buddhist sutras. Zen speaks of it to some degree or hints at it. But this sense that we might be, um, when we're presented with something in the world, like we have to take action, and we can sit and think, oh, what would the Buddha do in this situation? Or what do the precepts say? Let me look through the hundreds of rules in the Pali Canon, you know, in the Vinaya, and see has this ever happened before? What am I supposed to do? By which time the thing has already unfolded and you've missed your chance. It's a little bit like, um, so I think it's Dogen— is it Dogen who talks about— maybe he just collected this story, but he talks about the hand in the night that adjusts the pillow behind your head. That's always been a favorite example of mine of this like it— you're not even awake really, and you just reach and adjust your pillow. Or, or maybe he was a monk, right? So hopefully his own pillow. But you can imagine doing it like even with somebody else's pillow to help them be more comfortable, and you fall asleep and forget you've ever done it. And it can feel a bit risky sometimes to talk about this sort of innate wisdom because you can— we can easily get caught in, uh, in greed, in ill will, in delusion, in acting from those places and kid ourselves that we're doing the right thing. It's— that's, I think, one of the reasons why our old teacher was so, uh, reluctant to speak about Buddha nature. But I think it's important to talk about it. And one of the things you develop as your faith deepens and as you practice over the years is a sort of felt sense between the difference of acting from greed, ill will, or ignorance, and acting from a place of more open-heartedness and generosity and loving kindness. As I said in my longer talk a few weeks ago, it feels differently in the body. That's one of the ways we can check in. Am I, am I kind of constricted or clenched in some way physically? And we can sort of feel that in our minds as well. Has Has my mind tightened around something? Has my view narrowed? One of the teachers at San Francisco Zen Center talks about like short-sightedness. Have I become short-sighted, or am I— have I got this sort of openness? And maybe it's helpful to sort of take a little bit as a practice for a day or two, just noticing as we go through the day when we're, when we're speaking, where am I speaking from? When I'm acting, where am I acting from? Um, Satya was away last week on a training course for 6 days, I think., and, um, it's the longest I've been at home on my own in the new house. And, and the longest for quite a while, maybe for a couple of years I've been at home on my own. And it was so strange for the first couple of days for me. So I'm so used to sort of negotiating, when do you wanna have lunch? What are you doing this afternoon? And then figuring out, oh, Satya's doing that. What am I gonna do this afternoon? And what time do you want dinner? And what do you want for dinner? And all of this kind of partly, uh, like, partly coming from a sort of genuine, let's try and work this out together so we can both get our needs met, and sometimes coming from a place of this kind of small child that doesn't want to upset anybody, so has to sort of collect what everybody's desires are before I choose what to do. So it really threw me like, oh, I guess I just have to choose how to spend my days myself now. That's a bit weird. I mean, I had appointments, you know, and various things, but quite a lot of space in between those. It was a heat wave as well, so that had some impact. And what I really thought, well, I'm going to take this as an opportunity to kind of really notice where I'm choosing from. And in the daytime, as the days went on, in the daytime it got easier and easier to kind of, to make wise choices for myself, um, for the, you know, people I was talking to, you know, whatever was going on around me. And then often what happened in the evening was I'd make unwise choices as I started to miss Satya Robyn more, or I was a bit tired, or they the heat is really getting to me. I'm like, oh, this compulsive scrolling on my phone feels differently, but I can't— in my body, but I can't— I know it's— but I can't quite break it. Or I'm not really hungry, but I'm gonna have some more toast. You know, there's kind of— and, and there's a different— yeah, there's a different embodied quality, and there's a different felt quality in the mind between when a choice, when a response, when wisdom appears, to when we're working from greed, hate, and delusion. And one way of accessing that for me is to ask the Buddha for guidance. And this isn't really spoken about much in Western Buddhism, at all, or maybe not at all. And yet in Buddhist countries, particularly among lay people, it's a pretty common practice. Earlier this year I read out the story from John Blofeld's book about Kwan Yin of people going to a shrine— decades ago this was in China— people going to a shrine to pray for a healthy baby boy in the pregnancy, and And John says to the shrine attendant, but what if it's a girl? He said, well, if Kwan Im gives them a girl, they'll know it's going to be a really special girl. But this kind of interplay between the Buddha's wisdom— the Buddha is something outside of us— and their wisdom and our actual day-to-day lives. It can be really helpful for me to approach the shrine, like, just take a stick of incense, make a water offering, sit down, maybe do a little bit of chanting, maybe just sit quietly and say, I'm not sure what to do with this tangle in my life. I'm not sure how to frame— should I, should I wait a bit longer before saying something, or should I kind of 'Why the bullet and go for it?' Or, 'I'm not even sure what I should be doing with my day.' And just listen, and often an answer appears. And again, just checking in that embodied response— does that feel like it's coming from a place of wisdom? Does it feel like it's coming from a place of constriction? And when I have— when that kind of ritual is involved, and I'm lighting incense and sitting down and being quiet, There is often— let's say there's always an answer that appears that guides me to the next right thing. Namaste. Some frustrations.

In gratitude, we make this offering to all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas throughout space and time. May it be as fragrant as earth itself, reflecting our careful efforts, our wholehearted mindfulness, and the fruit of understanding. Slowly ripening. May we and all beings be companions of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. May we all— and realize our true home.

In a couple of weeks, July the 18th, I've got a Dharma hour at 5 o'clock online, I'll be giving a talk, Manifesting the Land of Bliss. How can we make the space around us, the world around us, into a pure land? And so do grab a ticket for that online if you want to. Um, volunteer day coming up on, uh, a week on Saturday. Volunteer hour. Sorry, it makes it sound a bit So, uh, yeah, the 11th, so next Saturday, not next Saturday, follows Saturday. Yeah, thank you. And then towards the end of the month, yeah. Allow me to bring— Blessed by Amitabha's light, may we care for all living things and the heavenly earth.