Satya Robyn leads a guided Pure Land Buddhist evening practice centered on honoring ancestors. The session includes seated meditation, chanting of Amitābha and Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, recitation of refuges and Bodhisattva vows, and prostrations, with readings from Helen and contributions from other attendees.
Chapters
Welcome everybody to our evening practice together. A special welcome if it's your first time, which is quite a few people today. Welcome if you're joining us via the magic of technology on Zoom as well. We're going to begin with the reading. Helen is going to read an ancestor prayer for us this evening.
So this is the remembrance of ancestors prayer written by our very own Casper for Exile Buddhists. Before we take our next action, we pause to remember our ancestors. We remember our Indian ancestors. Firstly, Shakyamuni, who was born in Lumbini and enlightened in Bodh Gaya and set the Dharma wheel turning in this age. We remember those who came before Shakyamuni and passed their wisdom to him. We remember Maha Prajapati, who walked 150 miles one step after another before becoming the first Buddhist nun. We remember the monastic and lay disciples of the Buddha and generations of teachers that spread Buddhism through the East and through the world, and who refreshed the precious Dharma. We remember awakened beings of all spiritual traditions, trusting that wisdom appears in the world in many different ways, at many different times, in many different places. We call to mind the wisdom of marginalized, marginalized and oppressed groups, much of which has already been lost. We remember our biological ancestors, our parents and grandparents, known and unknown, generations stretching back through time to the first humans in Africa. We remember the ancestors of our chosen families. We remember the ancestors of Ancestors of our own mind stream, the beings of our previous lives who practiced Dharma and brought light and joy to others. We remember people across the world who stood against oppression for human rights and the rights of all living things and for the Earth. We remember those who have oppressed and marginalized and harmed. We carry the legacies of all these ancestors, their gifts and their burdens. How wonderful to have the opportunity to work with all that has been handed down to us. We remember our ancestors. We remember our great ancestor, the Earth, and her great ancestor, the universe itself. Ancient Buddhas and ancestors, whereas we, we shall come to be Buddhas and ancestors. Venerating Buddhas and ancestors, we are one with Buddhas and ancestors. Contemplating awakened mind, we are one with awakened mind.
My friend Andy wrote one of the lines or two, so I can't say that I wrote the whole thing. That's just for accuracy's sake.
Thank you.
So we'll go into a period of meditation together. We'll sit for 10 or 12 minutes invitation to notice the breath entering and leaving at the tip of your nose. Cooler air coming in, warmer air leaving. To notice the quality of each breath, the pause between breaths. Not trying to breathe in any particular way, just noticing how it is moment to moment. And when other thoughts and feelings grab your attention, noticing what they are. Oh, 'Here's a thought about what I'm doing later,' or 'Here's a feeling about that thing that happened to me today.' Noticing what they are and then gently returning awareness to the breath. In a moment, we will chant together. We'll chant the name of the Buddha Amitabha. Amitabha. Not an historical figure, not someone that lived as far as we know, rather, uh, someone that we hear about from, uh, Shakyamuni Buddha, who did live 2,500 years ago in India, and tells the story of this mythical Buddha who has a red gold body and lives in a land where the ground and the trees are made from gemstones and jewels. And this Buddha Amitābha is the embodiment of the wisdom that, that sees all things clearly, that sees us just as we are with all our flaws and limitations and all our positive qualities, but sees our uniqueness and the compassion that loves all beings just as they are. And in this way, Amitābha is really a personification of enlightenment itself. So when we recite the name Amitābha We're calling at— we're invoking enlightenment itself, but particularly this quality of enlightenment where, where we feel received just as we are. Enlightenment doesn't demand anything of us, and occasionally we're able to offer that to other people as well. So there's a little tune. We say the name Amitābha 4 times and then the melody repeats.
And do—
so I'll sing the first word on my own and other people who know the tune will then join in. But do, yeah, do join in yourself, even quietly. So when you get the gist of it, that will give you an experience of the practice.
Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh.
Amitabh.
Amitabh. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh.
Amitabh.
Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh.
Amitabh.
Amita. Amita.
So in a moment we will recite the refuges and precepts and Bodhisattva verse together. I'll ask you to repeat after me. We have the Bodhisattva vows in call and response. If you want to see the words, they're on the A5 liturgy sheet, which you'll find next to you. The refuges are the things we place our trust in as Buddhists, like the ancestors. And the first one is an ancestor, is Shakyamuni Buddha. The, the— well, we say Buddha, so we mean both Shakyamuni Buddha, who was alive 2,500 years ago, but also all awakened beings. That's the thing that we're putting our trust in.
As Buddhists.
And then the Dharma, which is both the words those awakened beings speak and, more importantly, the reality those words point to. And the Sangha, the community that follow those teachings. And then the precepts, which are a mirror to our own nature. Not something that we wear heavily or used to beat ourselves up with, but something we can use to reflect. Well, what does it mean to be human for me? And finally, the Bodhisattva vows, which express the heart of awakened beings, which is the longing to bring other beings to awakening, awakening to universal love. So 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. For refuge I go to the Dharma, all that guides us to wisdom and compassion. Namo Dhamma. For refuge I go to the Sangha, those who live in the Buddha's light.
For those who live in the Buddha's light.
Namo Sangaya.
Namo Sangaya.
With faith in the Three Jewels.
With faith in the Three Jewels.
And in light of my human tendencies.
And in light of my human tendencies.
I pray that I may become aware.
I pray that I may become aware.
Of when I take life. I pray that I may become aware of when I take what is not freely given. I pray that I may become aware of when I fall into sexual misconduct. I pray that I may become aware I pray that I may become aware of when I fall into wrong speech. I pray that I may become aware of when I become intoxicated. No blame. Be kind. Love everything.
Innumerable are sentient beings.
We vow to save them all.
Inexhaustible are deluded 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. Namaste. Thank you. Thank you, Fee. I suppose in Buddhism we look to our ancestors for two main reasons. One is to teach us the particular practices, the forms, the words of the specific tradition that we're in, how to move around the shrine room, the tunes that go along with the chants, the particular chants, instructions in meditation. These are things that get passed down from teacher to student who becomes a teacher to their student, and so on and so forth. And they shift and change. Uh, the spirit is the same, but if you went to India 2,500 years ago, things would look a bit differently. They wouldn't be speaking English. In fact, probably the Buddha spoke Magadhi, even though the teachings that were written down were written down in Pali and then Sanskrit. The Buddha would have had his orange robes initially sewn from scraps of other fabric, fabric that he collected from burial shrouds initially, and then probably later in his career, robes made from nicer cloth that were donated by wealthy lay people. Those monastics around the Buddha were completely monastic. They were celibate, they took many precepts, they lived with just a very small number of possessions, literally a begging bowl and two robes. And Buddhism spread south into Thailand, Sri Lanka, Burma, through Tibet into China, Vietnam, Korea, and into Japan. And for us from Japan into the West, from all those other places as well. But we take our inspiration from the Japanese teachings.
Japanese—
in Japan there are monks, but mostly there are ministers who are married, and temples are run by families. And some of the robes cost as much as a sports car. And yet there is something of the same spirit despite all of those changes. And that is the other thing that we look to the ancestors for. So the forms and traditions, and, and more importantly, what underlies them, the spirit of practice, which is always pointing us to reality itself. And reality itself, from the point of view of a Buddha, is seeing the interconnection of all things, that we are not separate from stardust on the other side of the universe, and seeing the uniqueness of all things, being moved to compassion for suffering in the world, and also the steadiness that comes from, from that vast view of spaciousness, of, of the infinite. So this is the wisdom and the love always coming together. And partly I'm thinking about ancestors and giving and receiving and what we pass on, because towards the end of this year, Satya Robyn and I, who currently run the temple, will be moving out and handing it over to a small group of people, handing some things over. We're going to keep some things, um, including coming and doing some of the practice sessions. So there's a transition happening in our tradition. In fact, that is happening all the time. Of course, we're always receiving something and we're always transmitting something. Even walking into a room We're transmitting something, our mood, our emotions. We carry them in our body, the way we open a door, the way we put our cup of tea down. All of that sends something like us, like casting a stone into a pond, into the room, into the rest of the people. And at the same time, As transmitting, we're also receiving the energy of the other people around us. That's why it's important to come into spaces like this where we make a commitment to a certain kind of behavior and where there are people who have been practicing for longer than us. And more importantly, um, where the teachings and the practices and the awareness of those more senior practitioners point us to something else that, that we can receive all the time if we open our hearts and minds to it. As Pure Land Buddhists, we believe that the Buddha is present in every moment, whether you— whatever— however you take the word Buddha in that sentence, um, whether you believe there really is a being in a jeweled land beaming enlightenment across the leagues to us, or whether you believe that is a stand-in for telling us that enlightenment itself is available in every moment, that the universe itself and everything in it, it is at its heart the same thing as enlightenment. It's always possible to tune into that a little bit more, to tune into the fact that love is always present. And hopefully it's a little bit easier to do that here than in some other places. That's why people keep coming back, and I, I really trust that, you know, as a Pure Land Buddhist, my job is not to embody all those qualities perfectly. It's not to be the Buddha. In this room for you. It is to trust in that fundamental reality, myself. It is to have confidence that the Buddha is here, that enlightenment is here in the reality of this moment. And that confidence, that trust hopefully begins other people to find their own confidence and trust. And because I know that the Buddha is here in this moment, that enlightenment is present in every moment, it's easy for me to go away and hand over my role because the Buddha is staying. And I'll come back and meet the Buddha here, and I'll meet the Buddha in other places. But that is the fundamental confidence that Pure Land Buddhism teaches us, regardless of our own state of mind Whether we're wrapped up in thoughts and feelings about the day, whether we're nursing a bruised ego from something that happened at work, whatever it is, still we can trust that the Buddha is present, that enlightenment is present, that love is present. Those things, those thoughts and feelings greed, hate, delusion. They block our awareness of it, but they don't change our worthiness to receive it. It's always flowing towards us. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. So in a moment, we will stand. Feel ring a bell, we'll stand. And face the main shrine and make prostrations from standing to the ground. As we do that, we'll sing, chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which is the Japanese version of the mantra that we chanted earlier. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is the invocation— I take refuge in, I call out to, I bow to. Amida is the Japanese version of the word Amitābha. Bu or Butsu is— means Buddha. So it's the same spirit. And really calling that Buddha is calling all of the ancestors, is pointing directly to the interconnectedness of all beings. So once we've got straight, we'll begin. I'll just tell you the motion. We begin by placing our hands in gassho above our whole bodies, and this is saying like, with my whole being. And then in front of our mouths, which represents thoughts and words, spoken words. And then in front of our hearts, all of our emotions.
And then we bow down to the floor on our knees.
And lift our hands above our heads.
So it's like our head, the ego, is lower down, and the whole world and the Buddha is above. We'll do that 3 times, and we're singing the words, and there's a tune. And don't worry if you don't— yeah, don't worry too much.
It's a lot, it's a lot for the first time. Namaste. In gratitude, we make this offering to all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas throughout space and time. May it be as fragrant as Earth herself, reflecting our careful efforts, our wholehearted mindfulness, and the fruits come standing, slowly ripening. May we and all beings The companions of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, may we awaken to forgetfulness and realize our true nature.
So we will— when Phoebe rings the first bell, we'll bow to the person either side of us. And then to the main shrine again on the next bell. Taidya places, put them back to our places. We remain standing, sorry. In a moment we'll finish with the closing verse, but before we do Are there any announcements? If you'd like to know more about this form of Buddhism and the kind of practices we do here, recommend the book that Satya and I wrote, Just As You Are, which we've got copies for sale here. There's a donation bowl if you've got cash for donations, there's a donation bowl in the hallway. Otherwise you can make a donation online and you're very welcome to stay for a cup of tea after practice. In a moment we'll exit the shrine room. If you're on Zoom, do stay and I'll come back in and say hello. So after the closing verse, we'll exit the shrine room in silence. I'll go first, Helen, if you could talk. Yeah, and then once I'm out, everyone else can just filter out, no particular order, but we'll keep silence until keep silence in here until everyone's out of the room. Okay, so thank you. And we'll finish with the closing verse, which is on the literature sheet if you want to join in. It starts with the word blessed. Blessed by Amitābha's light, may we care for all living things.
And then I will—
yeah.
