Evening practice: connecting to the infinite

Namamitabhu. Welcome to everybody in the shrine room. Welcome if you're joining us on Zoom. I think we've got a couple of new people with us this evening, so special welcome to you. We'll begin as we always do with a Dharma glimpse this week, written and read by Alison. Thank you.

Connection: the power of community and interconnectedness. During the COVID era, I experienced real isolation, extreme isolation. Isolation so severe that I've been on a mission ever since to ensure no one has to go through what I did for 2 whole years. This was a tall order. I recognize that not everyone has met isolation, and many love their own company and feel safe with that. I used to love my own company, but since COVID I can no longer enjoy my own company without the company of nature or of other people. At no point in my life has community been more essential. I understand that as humans and mammals, we all need connection. We all need each other. Zoom, Netflix, social media, and even email are not substitutes for real connection and face-to-face communication. The disconnection is like a modern disease of the human race. Having spent nearly a decade in Asia, I've been challenged in the UK by a very different social culture, a culture of extreme independence and having enough, a culture of caring for our own and of strong individualism. In many Asian cultures, particularly in East Asia where I lived and worked, people identify first and foremost with a group before the individual. Before living in Asia, I lived many years in socialist Berlin, where coming together as a community was a normal daily experience. There are obviously benefits on all sides, but we must ultimately find the balance that works best for us. I wonder though if my need for community and connection is just another addictive behavior. I wonder too if I am not just pushing a value onto others. Where is the line between a need and a service to others? How can we know when we are working for the good of all and when we are self-serving? My experience last April of coming together at the Big One with XR Buddhists in London had made me feel alive again. I'd reconnected with that force that works through me each and every time I am part of something bigger than my individual worries and difficulties. Like stepping out into other power, or the infinite, into something much bigger, self-power, or our limited egoic nature, just melts away and dissolves like ice in water, becoming one unified living, breathing body. On the other hand, I'm reflecting that if people each live on their own island they can only see the vast oceans of separation between them, building fences around ourselves so high that we can only live with the stories of our own inventions and can't see the reality beyond. To me, from my experience, this separation can cause people to become so wrapped up in self-power or their own small selves. How do we break free from our small egoic worlds? I love the phrase from Gandhi when he implied that in changing ourselves, we could also change the world. Yes, people can change on the inside, but starting with my small self, I, together with others, can plant seeds, build bridges, or grow ways of linking up, bringing people together like trees reaching out their roots to connect and to communicate beneath the soil. Gentle connection, respecting space whilst connecting with our roots. It's not a forcing or a pushing, but a surrendering into a more expansive awareness of each other, an acknowledgement of each other, a growing in wholeness, a finding strength in unity, an awareness that we are all interconnected, we are all one. Perhaps I can step aside from the person I think I am and let the self, or the Buddha, meet all of my difficult parts and offer their unconditional love and healing. Perhaps in non-dualistic terms, where people aren't experiencing themselves as individuals, where there is no I or we, people can rest in a shared space, a space not of doing but of being. Resting in being, in gently expanding awareness. People's roots, like the trees, reaching out into a vast web of interconnection. Namamitabhu.

Namamitabhu.

Thank you. Thanks.

Yeah, so, uh, Each week we always open with a Dharma glimpse, someone reflecting on their own life experience, and we really welcome, uh, Dharma glimpses from anyone in the community. So please think about writing one, and, uh, we can— you can either read it yourself or we can ask someone else to read it for you. So Now moving into a period of meditation. Zen Master Daishonin invites us to sit in meditation with the spirit 'What is this?' So perhaps beginning with the breath, as we do in mindfulness meditation, but whatever crosses our consciousness, bringing that spirit of curiosity to, oh, what's this, what's this. So we'll sit together in silence, bringing that spirit of curious open awareness to our experience moment to moment. We'll sit for about 12 minutes and then we'll move into the Kwan Yin mantra. So in a moment we'll chant the Kwan Yin mantra, Namo Kwan Shin Bosat. I'll put the words in chat if you're on Zoom. Kwan Yin, Kwan Shin, Kannon, Kanseron, all different names, Avalokiteshvara, for the bodhisattva of compassion, reminding us that compassion exists in the universe, that that quality of enlightenment is available in every moment. If only we see the world with the eyes of the Buddha, with enlightened eyes, we'd see that energy everywhere. We could see Kuan Yin everywhere, you can say. And that's also true inside our own hearts and minds, that Kwan Im is present, that that energy of compassion is present. Often it's covered up by many layers, but it's there nonetheless. Maybe not the only thing that's there, but it is there. So as we chant the mantra, we're reminding ourselves of this presence, both that we can invoke it and invite it to, uh, to grow more completely within ourselves, and also that we trust that it is all around us, if only we could see with the eyes of the Buddha.

Namah Kwan Shin Bosat. Namah Kwan Shin Bosat. Namah Kwan Shin Bosat. Namahwanshi in Bho Sats. Namahwanshi in Bho Sats. Namahwanshi in Bho Sat. Namah Shivaya. Namahwanchi in Bho Satya Robyn. Namahwanchi in Bho Satya Robyn. Namahwanchi in Bho Satya Robyn. Namah Shivaya. Satya Robyn. Namah Shivaya. Namah Shivaya.

So in a moment we're going to recite the refuges and precepts together. I'm just going to put the link to the words in chat if you want to read them. But the first part is, I'll invite you to repeat after me. So we begin with the Three Refuges, taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. So in the Buddha, which is both the historical figure of the Buddha and all awakened teachers. In the Dharma, which is the words the Buddha spoke and anything that guides us to enlightenment. Which in one sense is the whole universe. The Dharma is the whole universe. And the Sangha, those people practicing in the Buddhist community. But originally Sangha referred to arahats only, which were the people, monks and nuns in the Buddha's lifetime that had defeated the passions, that had gone beyond greed hate, and delusion. So new members of the Buddhist community were invited to take refuge in very experienced senior practitioners. And in modern Buddhism, uh, that's kind of expanded to include all Buddhists. And well, that's it really. I just wanted to give some historical context. Um, there's, there's a, a benefit to both ways of thinking, I suppose, if we're looking at people who are further along the path than us, there's particular things we can learn from them in their steadiness and faith. But if we're thinking about the whole Buddhist community, where we are beings that are foolish and unenlightened and bumping up against each other, then, then we learn different things. We learn about human nature and limitations and also valuable, a different kind of valuable lesson. And then we'll recite the Five Lay Precepts and then the Bodhisattva Vows. Anyway, 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 Dhammaya. For refuge I go to the Sangha, those who live in the Buddha's light. Namo Sangha.

Namo Sangha.

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.

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— —when I fall into wrong speech.

Of when I fall into wrong speech.

I pray that I may become aware. I pray that I may become aware of when I become intoxicated. Of when I become intoxicated. No blame. No blame. Be kind. Be kind. Love everything.

Love everything. Innumerable are sentient beings.

We bow 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.

A moment.

Suddenly panicking that the microphone was on the wrong setting, but it's all fine. Um, about a year ago, just over a year ago, in June last year, I was in London with, uh, at a workshop with David Loy, who wrote Eco Dharma, among other things. And he was speaking about a kind of Buddhist analysis of what has created climate change, late-stage capitalism, the sort of state of the world today. And his suggestion, which is a very Buddhist idea, so it's is sort of— is, is that each of us has this kind of existential feeling of separateness. I talked about this a little bit on Saturday, I think, um, and that as a response to that, one of the normal human reactions is to fall into the three— one of the three poisons. Greed: oh, I'm going to fill up this emptiness. Uh, hatred: oh, I'm just going to push everything I don't like away and just be really kind of angry with the world. Or ignorance: oh, I'm just going to pretend there's nothing wrong and not really pay attention to this feeling of disquiet in inside me. And that the antidote to this is to begin to have an experience of interconnection to all things. And I think that's a very good analysis. Interconnection to all things is the antidote to separation. Or as a Pure Land Buddhist, we might say, uh, can faith in Amida is the antidote to this separation. But I've been thinking about a sort of slightly different way of describing that, which is sort of the same thing really, but just a different— using different words. Is that one of the human reactions— one way of understanding that human reaction that we have to that feeling of separation from the universe is to grab one thing and try and connect with that in the perfect way. This relationship is going to fix me. This chocolate cake is going to fix me. This career is going to make me feel better. This group of people, uh, is going to fix me. This training course, whatever it is. And that's kind of a bit, perhaps a bit, a little bit more. And it's not like simply greed, it's like, oh, I am looking for connection, but I'm looking for it in these fragments of the whole. And these fragments of the whole are all limited. Even the most perfect relationship is going to fail at some point, even if it lasts a lifetime. One of you is going to die. That's what the Buddha realized when he woke up after the night with all the courtesans before leaving the palace and looked around and saw them as kind of flesh and blood creatures. So, oh, even all these beautiful women my father the king keeps sending me are subject to impermanence. Old age, sickness, death. So the invitation from a Buddhist point of view is to stop taking refuge in fragments of the whole and to take refuge in the whole, in infinity, in the infinite universe, in infinite light, which is to say in Amida. And you'll find that the, the more deeply you're able to connect to that sense of wholeness, the easier all those other relationships will be, because they're not so high stakes. They're not the thing that's going to save me. And then I can enjoy my relationship, my chocolate cake, my career, my training course, this group of people, um, because I'm not desperately dependent on them to fix that spiritual existential thing that all humans have. And, and this is one way of understanding Nembutsu, a movement from taking refuge in, in impermanent things to taking refuge in everything, everywhere, all at once. Sorry, No Moment to Lose, which if you haven't seen, you should go and see because it deserved all those Oscars. No Moment to Lose. So in a minute we're going to stand and make prostrations. I'll just You can't really see that on Zoom, so I'm just gonna describe it for a moment. So we begin by making gassho and we make gassho above our whole bodies. So this is like saying with the whole of me. And here in front of our mouths, so with our speech and sort of mind, our thoughts that we have words for. And here in our hearts, so this is like with my feelings and spirit. So with all of those things, I'm bowing. So we stand and moved the gassho through those places, and then we go to kneeling and we bow with our palms up above our heads in front of the Buddha. And as we do— I'm looking at the screen, I should be looking at the camera— as we do that, we're saying Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, which is the Nembutsu. So invoking the spirit of what I just spoke about, taking refuge, bowing with our whole beings to the Buddha, to the infinite. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

In gratitude, we offer this incense to all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas throughout space and time. May it be fragrant to this Earth herself, reflecting our careful efforts. Our whole heart awareness, and the fruits of understanding slowly ripen. May we and all beings be companions of Buddhas and bodhisattvas. May we awaken from forgetfulness and realize our true birth. To each other.

Namaste. We'll tidy our seats and back to our seats. We'll finish with the closing, but just a reminder that Retreat there on Saturday. Schedule is in the WhatsApp chat, so feel free to join us for as much or as little of that as you'd like. Following Saturday, meditation marathon in the center of town. Would be great to have some people joining us for that, but if no one does, then Satya Robyn will just do lots of meditation in central town, and then we'll need to go.

So, uh, I'm starting my prayer here on Friday morning. I'll send a message out about it tomorrow, but it'd be lovely if you want to join me either in town or on Zoom. Yeah, for the next year. Yeah, at some point.

Blessed by Amitabha's light, may we care for all living things and the whole earth. In a moment.