Satya Robyn leads a group Buddhist practice service from December 2022. The gathering includes a dharma talk about the historical Buddha, guided meditation with Shakyamuni mantra, and a merit transfer for a deceased sangha member.
Chapters
As we suspected, a quieter group this evening after a really busy Saturday. Beth's joining us on Zoom. Hi, Beth. Again, lovely to have you with us. Just ringing, I'm just ringing, my ears are ringing, I'm just listening to the bell. That's a bit of a Zen thing, isn't it? The bell's listening and I'm the one who's ringing. He's kindly agreed to read a Dharma glimpse this evening that's been sent in by Jen. I'll just pass the mic.
Not a Dharma glimpse by Jen. I have been sitting here typing for ages and I've deleted a lot of things. I guess I'm feeling a bit self-critical tonight, and also sad and angry. I've been feeling worried that it will be obvious in my writing, so I keep deleting it as a way of staying private, or writing something that's mainly made up as a way of providing what I've been asked for and also staying private. I haven't had any experiences over the last few days where I feel I have understood or seen some greater wisdom. So my glimpse today is about not getting a glimpse. I think tomorrow or sometime soon I will be able to meet all this wildness I'm experiencing in myself, a lot of anger and frustration and contempt, and underneath those, sadness and grief and fear and powerlessness. With some compassion, I am coping today, which means telling all of my angry and sad parts that they are being ridiculous and hiding them underneath some other parts that are really good at being addicted to work. Coping is okay, and maybe tomorrow I will stop coping. I just had a picture in my mind of a house being battered by very strong winds. As I write, I'm in bed on the top floor of my tall house, and it is windy. I can hear it shaking the trees outside, and the sea will be wild out there in the dark. I have shut all the doors and windows and battened down the hatches, and that makes the house this strong, solid thing that shakes and creaks. Eventually, perhaps it will fall down. That's coping. And there's another image coming to me of opening all the doors and windows wide and letting the bad weather blow right through. That doesn't feel possible today, but today I'm On my day of not getting a glimpse, I will just bear in mind that it might be possible some other time.
Namaste. Thank you. Thanks.
So tomorrow is officially Bodhi Day, the anniversary of the Buddha's enlightenment on the calendar that we follow. So as we move into some silence, I invite you to bring the Buddha to mind, to just let your attention dwell on the Buddha. So if it might be sitting with your eyes closed but seeing in your mind's eye an image of the Buddha, you might, uh, open your eyes and let them rest on one of the Buddhas in the room. And we'll just dwell in the company of the Buddha. You may find that some things come to distract you, and, and just gently acknowledging those and bringing your attention back to the Buddha. You may find that the image or the sense of the Buddha begins to feel lively, um, goes beyond being a visualization into a sense of, oh, there is something here. Sometimes that comes, sometimes It doesn't. Now, if you're not a visual person, you may just have a sense, a sense of, a felt sense of, oh, I'm putting the Buddha like in front of me, or just to the left and above me, or here in my heart. And of course, you could just sit with us quietly if you prefer. So we'll move into chanting the Shakyamuni mantra, which you can find on the liturgy sheet. I don't feel 100% confident about the chant of Satya. Maybe you can start us off this evening.
Om Muni Muni Maha Muni Shakya Muni Swaha.
Om Muni Muni Maha Muni Shakya Muni Swaha. Om Muni muni mahamunishakyamunisvaha! Ohh... muni muni mahamunishakyamunisvaahaa! Omm— munimuni mahamunishakyamunisvahaa! Om muni muni mahamunishakya munisvaha! Oh Muni muni mahamunishakya munisvaha! Ooh... Muni muni mahamunishakya munisvaha! Om muni munimaha mini shakhyamunisvah! Oh Muni Munima Mini Shakhya Minusva— oh Moonie Moony Mama Moo-Nee Shaqia Mu-ni-swa-ha... Om Muni muni mahamunishakya munisvaha!
Ohh...
Munimuni mahamunishakyamunisvaahaa!
Oohhh—
Munimuni mahamunishakyamunisvahaa! Om Muni muni mahamunishakya munisvaha! Ohh... Munimuni mahamunishakyamunisvaahaa! Oohhh— Munimuni mahomunishakyamunisvahaa! Om muni munimaha mini shakhyamunisvah! Oh Muni Munima Mini Shakhya Moonies— oh Mani Munichaka Musician Moony's Bar? Om muni muni mahamunishakya munisvaha! Oh Muni muni Mahamunishakya Muniswaah! Ahh... Muni muni mahamunishakya muniswaha! Om muni munima huni shakya munisvaha! Oh Muni Munima Hunishakyamunisvaah! Oh Muni Munimaa Hunishakyamunisvaha! Om muni muni mahamunishakya munisvaha! Oh Muni muni Mahamunishakya Muniswaha! Om muni muni Mahamunishakya Muniswaha! Om Muni muni mahamunishakya munisvaha!
Ohh...
Munimuni Mahamunishakyamunisvaahhh—
ohh...
Munimuni Mahamunishakyamunisvaha! Om muni muni mahamunishakyamunisvaha! Oh Muni muni Mahamunishakyamunisvaha! Ooh... Munimuni Maahumunishakiamunisvaha! Om Muni muni mahamunishakya munisvaha!
Ohh...
Munimuni mahamunishakyamunisvaahaa! Oohhh— Munimuni mahamunishakyamunisvahaa! Om muni muni maha muni shakya muni svaha. Om muni muni maha muni shakya muni svaha.
So we'll run through the refuges and precepts and so on, which are on the liturgy sheet. Please repeat after me. 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 Dhammaya.
Namo Dhammaya.
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 Sanghaya. With faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may not take life. With faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may not steal. With faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may not fall into sexual misconduct.
I pray that I may not fall into such things.' With faith in The Three Jewels—
'With faith in The Three Jewels' —'I pray that I may avoid wrong speech.' 'I pray that I may avoid false speech.' 'With faith in The Three Jewels...' 'With faith in The Three Jewels,' ...'...I pray that I may avoid intoxication.' 'I pray that I may avoid intoxication.' No blame!
No planning.
Be kind. Be kind. Love everything.
Love everything.
Innumerable sentient beings, we vow to save them all.
Inexhaustible ardor, vintage 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.
As I say, tomorrow is officially Bodhidharma Day, though we had our celebration on Saturday remembering the Buddha's enlightenment. And by the Buddha, we mean Shakyamuni Buddha. Whose mantra we just recited. Oh sage, great sage of the Shakya clan. The mantra translates to something like that, which is what Shakyamuni means— sage of the Shakya clan. Siddhartha Gautama, he was born as and then just became known as the Buddha. Most historians agree he existed, but we can't really be sure of much of his actual biographical information. There's a few different versions of the Buddha's life story in the sutras, and they have some things in common. But they don't completely match. And, uh, it also has a lot in common with Mahavira's story, who founded the Jain tradition, almost as if they kind of borrowed from each other's accounts when they were writing. These things down. And we're told, you know, if you pick up a book on Buddhism, what you hear is the Buddha was a prince, and the Shakya people weren't— it wasn't a monarchy, the Shakya clan. So he wasn't really a prince. And you'll read that he rode from the palace and he saw the four sights. And some versions of this have it happening in a day, and some versions have it as something that happens over quite a long period of time, that he goes out and comes back again. A little bit like how Shakespeare compresses the story— I know I've used this analogy before— compresses the story of Romeo and Juliet from 3 months, as it's told in the Italian original, to like a week, to make it more impactful. So we don't know much about the actual person. We know that there were lots of spiritual teachers doing the same kind of thing like Mahavira, that the so-called shramanas who left home and contemplated these deep meaningful questions of suffering and the way out of suffering using similar approaches and similar techniques, and, and each a bit different from each other. The Buddha was part of this movement. We know that in India at the time, in northern India, they were moving from a kind of um, they were— the, the area was becoming more urbanized. People were moving and living in towns and larger gatherings, and, and, and a middle— like a middle class, a merchant class was appearing that hadn't appeared before. So it was a time of great change socially. Most of the Buddhist monks actually lived on the edges of these towns and then would go and retreat for periods in the forest. So they For all they lived the homeless life, actually they kind of existed in this edge space. Um, and a few weeks ago I was talking about the difference between Buddhists who— was it me or was it you, Satya? I don't know, or was I, or was it I just hear about it somewhere? Maybe it was in my Bright Dawn study group. At some point I was involved in a conversation about the difference between the Buddhists who try to follow the, the words of the Buddha's teachings. Okay, thank you. It's maybe a bit, I've maybe, maybe I've mentioned it a few different times, compared to those who try to live in the spirit of the But yeah, we certainly had that conversation. Yeah. And what is that spirit? I was wondering. The words we can tell from this account are, you know, they're provisional in some way. They weren't written down until a couple of generations after the Buddha died. There were lots of different versions, only a couple of which survive. Teachings that were given to the nuns' community have mostly disappeared into history. Teachings that were given to the lay people have mostly disappeared to history. Almost as if, like, it was only Catholicism was the only teachings of Christianity that we had, and, and somehow the Orthodox, uh, churches had got lost to history and the Protestant churches had got lost to history. We've just got one strand. And then we have the Mahāyānas who come in later and, and add things and, and, uh, write texts putting words into the Buddha's mouth to try and get some sense of his spirit across rather than just doing it mechanically. How can we really inhabit what he was trying to do? Well, we might do that by going and living in the forest in the way that he did, and giving up all our possessions and just having a begging bowl and doing lots of meditation and thinking deeply about ethics and inquiring deeply into the state of our own minds. And Buddhists do all of those things, but for me I think I, I now, where I'm in my practice, is even taking a step back from all of that and trying to live the questions that the Buddha lived as much as the answers that he discovered during his own lifetime. And his question was, how can I find peace? In a world where suffering is deeply, deeply present. And he lived lots of different answers to that, including meditation, including being— teaching and practicing compassion, um, including something about pointing us to the reality of the universe somehow, things as they are. But what I'm really interested in for myself and encouraging others to do is to really take that question seriously and not just accept in one piece the answers that were given, but really attempt to live it in our lives the way the Buddha lived it, and the way many, many generations of people have, have kept on trying to live it since then. Namamitabhu. Who knows what he would have made of this temple and this practice and the things that we're doing here, the form might feel very alien, like, well, you're not doing— taking this meditation very seriously. But I hope and suspect that he would recognize the spirit that we're practicing in. Okay, namo amida butsu.
Namaste. Namaste.
Namaste. Namaste.
In gratitude, we offer this incense to all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas throughout space and time. May it be fragrant as earth itself, reflecting our careful efforts, our wholehearted awareness, and the fruits of understanding. May we and all beings be companions to Buddhism. May we awaken from ignorance to enlightenment.
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. So we're going to finish practice this evening by transferring merits to David Hope, uh, longtime sangha member from this community who passed away last weekend.
By your vows and through your grace, a pure land appears.
So we pray that David is reborn into the land of love and bliss received by the light of Amitabha Buddha, that he's able to let go of fear and enter into the realm of pure love. Where Amida and Kwan Im and all the great bodhisattvas will be waiting to welcome him.
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
Blessed by Amitabha's light, may we care for all living things and the holy earth.
Namaste.
