Satya Robyn teaches on Buddhist spiritual life, Pure Land practice, and Nembutsu chanting. The talk covers prayer, karma, meditation, and how to work with insomnia and emptiness. Audience members share experiences with caregiving and receiving support.
Chapters
Yeah, that's fine. Great. Yeah, good. Welcome to this morning's talk, Eat, Sleep, Pray, Repeat. Tongue twister as well as a talk title. I guess I just wanted to say something about the religious life, and I hadn't exactly thought that through when I came up with the title. It just sort of arrived spontaneously. I think I'd recently heard that song on the radio, Eat, Sleep, Rave, Repeat, and I was just inspired to think about what that meant for my own life, and I don't do much raving. So prayer is an English word, and it's not a word you hear in Buddhist circles very much. We often think of prayer of being asking for something, but of course a prayer can also be setting an intention for something. We can pray to receive something, but we can also pray to offer something to the world. This morning when we recited the lay precepts, we say, "I pray that I may not take life, which is asking for support for our own behavior rather than asking for something for ourselves. It's about asking for support to be in a particular way in the world. Prayer and meditation have got a very close association in the Christian traditions, but we don't use the word prayer very much when we're talking about Buddhist meditation, even though sometimes the experience of meditation can be the same as a contemplative Christian's experience of prayer. And of course, in Pure Land Buddhism, we take refuge by saying the Nembutsu, which is a prayer inviting the infinite light of the Buddha to come into relationship with us so that we may be lifted into the Pure Land in this lifetime and in the next lifetimes. It's a very key and clear way of praying. And there are a couple of characteristics of prayer that I wanted to draw out, which I think we can then apply to the other two, working and even to sleeping, which is something you mostly don't pay any attention to, but to the rest of life really, I mean, when we're not just formally sitting doing spiritual practice. We often say there's two halves to an amida buddha-sutra, and we can say in the same way there's the same two halves to any form of prayer. And those two halves are me, the practitioner, as an ordinary foolish being, and something that isn't me, in our case, amida Buddha, the Buddha of infinite life, who embodies complete wisdom, complete acceptance, complete compassion. So let's start with me, an ordinary foolish being. My experience, my personal experience of when I feel closest to the Buddha is when I can be most honest about my own state of being about my own foolishness, let's say, to use a pure Buddhist word. So, say I get into a tangle with another person. One of the things that can happen initially less so these days because I know about it and I try and work hard to counteract it, but certainly it does happen still and it used to happen much more, is that I would work hard to preserve my identity, which is, which might be, I've done nothing wrong, say. Yeah, so let's take that as a belief. I'm not the sort of person who gets things wrong. Say that's an unconscious belief. That I have. And I'm clear that isn't true now, but there are times when I used to believe it was very true, and it's still possible to fall back into that. So in that moment, I'm working really hard to convince myself of something that isn't the case, because the reality is I do let people down, I do make mistakes, I do take part in unskillful behavior sometimes. That's how it is. To be human. And when I'm really working hard to avoid that truth, two things happen. One is that I get exhausted because it takes a lot of work to avoid reality, and the other is that I create distance between myself and the Buddha, and myself and the world.
You know, the more—
the harder I work to avoid my inner reality, the more I'm also avoiding the reality of what's around me. In the world, things lose their edge, their crispness. It's harder to be lively in the world. It's harder to enjoy life when you're really working hard to avoid a painful truth about yourself. So when I land in my own reality and go, "Oh, you know what? I shouldn't have said that. I did make a mistake there." Somehow the example that comes to mind was a piece of— I can't even remember why I was— what the point of this was, but I had— I'd got a piece of glass and I wasn't sure whether it was Perspex or glass because I'd worked myself up into a kind of anxious state about the project that I was doing. I think it was maybe one of the first attempts to put a cage on the bunny hutch for the winter. I thought, oh, I've got— but my history with DIY has got a lot of ups and downs in it, and that put me in quite an anxious place when I was starting this project. So I lost the ability to discern what material I was working with, which is, you know, when you're in a serious place of anxiety, those sorts of faculties disappear. I thought, well, I'll just try cutting. If it's Perspex, I should be able to cut it. And of course it shattered. I was like, oh no, it's definitely glass. But I didn't go, oh, it's definitely glass, okay. In the moment, it was an awful truth to face that I'd made this mistake, and also there was glass everywhere, which— at least we didn't have the puppy at that point, so it was a little bit easier to manage the situation. But I was sort of furious with myself, and it was really only when I was able to land in the reality of, okay, today this is the sort of person that I am, I made this mistake, something relaxes. The part that works hard to avoid that truth relaxes, and the whole system relaxes a little bit, you know. In my body, I felt some— I feel something soften when I land in acceptance, which is sometimes contrition. Acceptance is sometimes contrition. And in that relaxation, suddenly the world becomes available to me again, and I can notice the flowers and the rain and the sun and the people around me. And come back into relationship with them. When I'm in that state of avoiding my own truth or really working hard to delude myself, it's actually, it's more difficult to be in relationship to people and to receive even quite supportive offers from people if they don't match the reality that we're really working hard to maintain. So in life and in spiritual practice, there's something really important about honesty, about recognizing, "Oh, today this is the sort of person I am. In this moment, this is the sort of person I am." Not that that's necessarily true for all time. Dhamma Vicaya in Questions in the Sand a book of questions and answers. One of the questions is about guilt, and he says mostly guilt is us working hard to avoid the reality of the sort of person that we are. And when we really land in that, that's when we feel contrition, which is regret, sadness, wanting to make amends, which is quite different from guilt, which is usually characterized by beating ourselves up. So honesty is really important. I was also thinking about not adding anything to the world or to ourselves. And what I mean by that is— perhaps I'm just describing the same phenomenon in a different way— but there's one of the ideals of Buddhism, particularly of something like Zen Buddhism, is to come into relationship with the world just as it is, without coloring the world. When we study Buddhist psychology, we use the word 'rupa,' which is sometimes translated as 'form,' but it can also be translated as 'color,' like having rose-tinted spectacles. But you can also have, maybe have dark-tinted spectacles. You know, we add all sorts of things to the world by our unconscious beliefs about how things are or how people are. And one of the ideals of meditation practice, or of Zen practice, general Buddhist practice I suppose, but it's emphasized in the more meditative traditions, is to come into relationship with the world without adding anything, without any gloss. Just, this is the flower, this is the chair, this is the Satya Robyn, or Jhana, or Jhana, without my judgments or opinions. Or values added onto them. In his instructions to the cook, Dogen talks about there being no room between you and the knife, and I think this is the kind of experience he's referring to. It's a sort of intimacy with the world where there's no confusion, there's no troubling thoughts, there's no calculation involved. It's simply an experience of being very intimate and very in tune with whatever is in front of you. Here's the reality, this is me meeting it without adding anything to it. That's a great spiritual ideal. Maybe we manage it in moments, you know, if we're on a retreat and the conditions are really good and supportive for them. For me, sometimes when I'm out on my own in the natural world, it's much easier to just have a sense of being with, without me adding anything from my own side to it. But put me in a situation where there's other human beings, and all of those judgments start to appear. So for me, there's something about not adding anything which goes back to the same place of honesty, because it's often emphasized, "Don't add anything to the world," but I think what I want to draw out, and this takes me back to the first point I made, is not adding anything to ourselves either. So in this moment, I am feeling judgmental. That's how it is. That's my reality right now. It's not my reality right now, I'm just using that as an example. Dhammavijja uses the word conceit to describe this kind of identity that we throw up above our own reality. And sometimes our reality is that we're really in tune with things and we're really compassionate and we're in a space where we're kind of embodying all the Buddhist virtues. You know, when I did my Nembutsu retreat before my ordination many years ago, I came out of that feeling such love and compassion for the world, and really almost the world was really glowing in a particular way. And I imagined that I was— appeared sort of lit up to the people around me. I remember someone interviewing Tenzin Palmo after she came out of her cave retreat, and they said the same, she was just glowing. And the same journalist said, even a few years later, she said, most of the glow had gone, but I could see it was still there at the core. And she'd been, after she'd been in the world, you know, that happens. And sometimes we're in that place, and sometimes We're not in that place. Shantigarbha, the bodhisattva who goes into the hell realms, gets his robes dirty, and really there's just an implication there of when we're in the world, when we're in messy situations, sometimes that messiness rubs off on us. And trying to pretend that that isn't true gets us into all sorts of trouble, like the trouble I described with the glass and the perspex. But it also, ironically, trying to force ourselves to be compassionate, or to kid ourselves that we're compassionate or loving or kind, ironically takes us away from genuinely being able to express those values. And it takes us away from the source of those values, the light of the Buddha which inspires us. Because really, When we come into relationship with the light, two things happen. When I come into relationship with the light, two things happen. One is that I experience being loved and receiving compassion towards me and being accepted just as I am. But in order to be accepted just as I am, that does mean that I catch self— sight of myself just as I am sometimes. When I first started practicing, that was quite hard to take. I'm just remembering, there's a Jared— I think it's a Jared Manley Hopkins poem that I've just sort of got on the edge of my consciousness, if I'm thinking of the right poet. Who writes about his experience of prayer and coming into the— Satya Robyn, so it seems like I'm on the right lines— coming into the house of God and feeling so unworthy of the love that he received in that moment that he couldn't even lift his eyes up. And some of my early spiritual— she's looking more confused now, so maybe that's not right— but some of my early spiritual spiritual experiences were characterized by that mix of things, because coming into relationship with the Buddha, with the light, meant seeing myself as I truly was, because that is how it is to be loved. The Buddha loves us as we are, not as we pretend to be, or as we would like to be. And there was something both very beautiful and painful about that, as I was like, oh, okay, I guess I'm this sort of person coming into relationship with you, not the sort of person that I thought I was or that I wanted to be. And so I would go through this experience of feeling deeply loved and feeling slightly wrenched and wretched as that part of me that, that really didn't want to see those truths got activated, and then landing more deeply in the sense of being accepted and loved by the Buddha, and then experiencing a sort of real heartache of, "Oh, and I've been keeping myself away from this. I've been working hard to keep myself away from this because I didn't believe it was possible to be accepted in this way." And that's what keeps us from being honest with ourselves. Fear that if we really own up to the sort of person we are, we won't be caught, we won't be accepted, we won't be received. Of course, some of us have had that experience. Human beings are mostly not Buddhas. When we are unskillful, we get a reaction back from the world. We're not held in the way that we want to be. Even in spiritual communities where we're held in the way that we want to be most of the time, Sometimes there's a failure of loving because that's how it is to be human. This is why we take refuge first in the Buddha and in Amida, where there's no failure of loving. So coming into prayer is a brave act because it means taking a risk. It means risking not being caught. And we take that perhaps because we've been inspired by somebody else's experience. Experience of being caught. We catch a bit of their faith and we go, "Oh, if they can do it, maybe I can do it." That's the value of spiritual communities. Sometimes we just read about it in a book. Holden read about it in a book and he went, "Oh, wow, there is something that will catch me if I jump. There's something that will respond to me if I call out to it. He wrote that little poem, didn't he? The moon shines on everybody in the village, but you have to look up to see the moon. And yeah, fear stops us from looking up because we, we don't want to find out that there might not be a moon there after all. And yet, in spiritual practice, when we look up from a place of honesty we find out there is Ammu, there is the Buddha, there is something bigger than me that accepts and holds me and loves me just as I am. So this is particularly important in formal spiritual practice. Taking that risk is, is the way to more intimacy with the Buddha. In the West, sometimes we can think of the spiritual life as being something to do with progress, and even if you look at classical Buddhism, you know, Theravada Buddhism, and sometimes Tibetan Buddhism texts as well, there's a sense of you start at step 1, then you do step 2, step 3, and step 4, become a stream-enterer, and eventually you become an arahant, then you become a Buddha. And yet in the Japanese schools of Buddhism, that idea of progression doesn't quite map on so easily, and I think there's a real wisdom in cutting through that. Sense of progression. Partly because progression feeds— that idea that we can progress feeds into the ego in that sense of, well, I want to be better than I am, so I'll pretend I'm better than I am now. Karma is inexorable, one of the spiritual truths of Buddhism. It's inescapable. And yet it is— and one way of working with karma is You know, this is, in some ways, this is what I do as a psychotherapist. A client comes with some karmic baggage and we process it, and then something else comes up and we process that. And to some degree, that's what I do in my own life. I experience a feeling, okay, let me get to know this, let me make some progress letting go, okay, great, then move on to the next thing. And some progress is possible that way, but what you discover the more you do that is there is always something else that is going to come along. There's always another feeling, there's always more karma, there's always more baggage, there's always more issues. What the Japanese schools of Buddhism encourage us to do, and some of the other schools you can find this teaching as well, is to take a sideways leap out of the karmic stream. This is what happens when we pray. This is what happens when we're honest with ourselves and when we come into relationship with the Buddha. Rather than trying to make progress on our stuff, we land in a place of going, 'Oh, here's this stream of karma, of baggage, of issues that is sort of propelling me around in circles. And I can sit here, I can land here in the space where the Buddha accepts me just as I am. And there's something very profound. And yes, that might lead to changes in your life, but But in and of itself, that is a key spiritual truth. We don't need to add anything. We don't need to go, "Oh, I will land in that place because it will make me a better person," or "because I'll then make progress on my issues." Those things might happen, but actually a mystical practice, a religious practice, we land in devotion for its own sake. And there is something greatly freeing about that, actually. When we do that, when we land in a sense of being accepted just as we are, being able to take ourselves just as we are, watsana, and know that that watsana version of us is accepted by the Buddha, the tendrils of karma do tend to loosen their grip. Grip on us, actually. That is one of the gifts of spiritual practice, even one of the gifts of just meeting the Buddha. Buddhism itself doesn't talk about asking for specific things. From the Buddha, although I think lots of lay Buddhists in traditionally Buddhist countries do do that. It isn't discussed in the Buddhist texts. It is a key part of other spiritual traditions, and I think there is a place for that. But from a Buddhist point of view, particularly from a Pure Land Buddhist point of view, the most important thing actually is simply the act of coming into relationship and meeting the Infinite.
Light.
That in itself is enough. Trusting that that is enough will take us to very unexpected places in our life, often better than we could have imagined, often quite different to the future that we had mapped out for ourselves when we were busy trying to work out what sort of person we were, or trying to pretend that we were something that they're not. Okay, and for completeness' sake, I'll mention sleep because that was in the title. Not so much at the moment, but occasionally I go through periods of insomnia where I'm just very awake and alert and active and I assume there's something getting worked out in my unconscious, but I don't necessarily know what that is or have access to it, apart from the fact it's keeping me stimulated and awake. And in the past, what I would do is try and do all sorts of things to get to sleep, because I'd be thinking, "I'm not going to have much sleep tonight, that's going to be a problem for tomorrow. Let me do some meditation, let me do some relaxation exercises." But of course, when I was doing that, I was fighting the reality that parts of me were working really hard and needed to be awake to do that. And what I discovered was just in saying, "Oh, I guess I'm going to be awake tonight," well, sometimes that meant that I would get to sleep earlier, and often it meant that I didn't get to sleep early, but at least I wasn't fighting myself, and there was a relaxation of something in that, and a sort— there's a kind of peace in going, "Oh, well, this is what's happening then, and that's okay, even if it's not what I wanted to be happening." It is possible to find a way of being okay with not being okay. And it's possible to find that way through faith that we're received whatever state we're in. Namaste. So if anybody does have a question, there could be a space now for that to be attempted to be answered. Of course I'm available other times if there's no questions right now.
Speak about myself, I don't want to, but I am in the situation of caring for somebody who has brain injury, stroke and cancer and meningitis, so it's just, you feel the brain is empty, but lots of reaction and emotion by music, and I feel completely empty myself, because I am in the situation of somebody is not react anything, and just very sleepy all the time. So this sleepiness and sharpness is opposite situation. What I experience, and it's empty myself, and I would like to put more thinking and more feeling in this interaction, but I haven't got a source coming from this interaction because it's an emptiness.
Yeah.
And I feel like I have to, like, empty myself and I have to pull back somehow, but I have to find a way to pull back. This is my question.
It's hard, and it's like, you know, Buddhists talk about emptiness and we use the word to mean actually empty of conceit or ego, so it's quite a lively place, but when you're speaking of emptiness, it sounds like that's a really sort of drained out Drained out. Hollowed out place. Yeah, you know, it's sad, but when the people that we care for can't respond to us in the way that we would like them to respond to us, and it sounds like there's a part of you that is still hoping or inviting that something will come come back from him. And if that isn't possible, it's about not filling yourself from something that can't give you what you need, but asking for something else to fill you. For us, that's the Buddha. So it might be that you find your own higher power, might be that something You know, that just being in the natural world for some people gives them an experience of being received and receiving. Does that make sense? And it's hard when this— when a lot of your time is with that person. That is hard. It's about almost, can I be physically be here and be responsive to this this person without asking them to do anything for me. And that's hard when it's somebody that you have experienced that back and forth with, but I think that's the invitation.
I hope can I receive this invitation to be closer to Buddha, to feel myself more comfortable That's the challenge, isn't it?
How do you find— how do you make space? You know, maybe you find a way of doing 5 minutes of meditation or chanting in the morning that just gives you the opportunity to plug into a different source.
Thank you.
I think the statement 'just as you are' is powerful. You know, when you mentioned about as well the karma and that just— and I think there's a— it's just that for me personally anyway, it's just as you are, that acceptance, which I can't really put into words because I feel it's so powerful.
Yeah.
You know, it can pervade everything really. Just as you are.
Yeah, I think is it Inagaki who wrote that little poem? It just says, "Just as you are, really just as you are." Yeah, it is hard to believe that that's possible, and yet it is possible.
Yeah. And I know coming from, you know, another tradition as well, the Tibetan can be so complicated and can be so— it's there but it's so far away, you know, and whereas I think It's in, you know, the, um, to date, reading some of Dhamma Vijja's books, and, you know, it's, um, it resonates.
Yeah.
You know, it's, it's there for me. That feels how we should be.
Yeah.
Yeah. Just trusting that it is true. It's actually that simple. It's that trust.
Yeah. Yeah. And I find that every day it's as if it's as if, um, you know, Buddha's on your shoulder.
That's right. Yeah, I suspect— I don't know, and maybe I should say this— but I suspect a lot of those more complicated practices are actually ways of almost providing scaffolding for people to get to a place of trusting.
Mhm.
Mhm.
Mhm.
Because, you know, some people like to have a lot to do, or that, you know, if you, if you If that's your sort of nature, then it helps to have something to carry in there.
Yeah.
I guess I just want to share the effect of listening, which is a real sort of tenderness. There's something very tender about what you're talking about, and it's very difficult to put appreciate it.
I was reading, um, the introduction to Donald Richie's book on Dogen, The Dark Side of the Mirror, and one of the differences he draws out between Honen, the Pure Land, uh, sage, and Dogen is Zen Buddhist teacher is that for— although they both had their own relationship with other power, for Honin it was something that was a little bit otherworldly and mystical and expressed in very religious languages. This Buddha of infinite light who sits in this land of jeweled trees. Dogen had his own experience of other power which was much more to do with the natural world and to do with this experience of the whole world and the present moment being very alive and accessible. I suppose I'm saying that just to acknowledge that there's a place for both of those things, that we can come into relationship with the Buddha in a very sort of mystical, religious way, or we can come into relationship with Buddha as a sunset manifesting on a beautiful evening, and we can experience that kind of being received in both of those different ways. Anyway, with that, in a moment we'll do the bowing. So we'll stand and bow to each other.
Satya Robyn.
