Satya Robyn leads an evening Buddhist service with chants, liturgy, and a reflective talk on simplicity and the Buddha's life. The service includes Nembutsu invocations, community greetings, and informal housekeeping among participants like Brian, Jan, Chris, Mark, Becky, and Fi.
Chapters
I couldn't get the time. Alas, people busily engaged in secular matters take no notice of life wearing away day by day, night by night. Like a lamp in the wind, how long can it last? In the six realms of vasamsara, there is no fixed abode. Until we are emancipated from the sea of affliction, how can we rest in peace? Should we not be afraid? While still young and strong, let us each hear the Dharma. But to strive and diligently seek the path to eternity.
Amitabh.
Amitabh. Ameeta.
Ameeta.
Amitabh.
Amitabh.
Aami.
Namaste.
Still getting used to having remote people in the room and close people in the room. So from the temple household, Brian is here, if he's here from outside our one household visiting. Satya Robyn is here, I'm here.
We also are welcoming a new And Jan, and Chris, and Mark, and Becky.
Oh great, lovely. It's just nice because I can't see the screen, it's nice to know who I'm speaking to. Filmed in front of a live studio audience, as it used to say at the beginning of Cheers. Today I was reading Humankind by Rutger Bergman. That's not quite right. He's a Dutch writer speaking about— well, his thesis is that people are essentially decent, and he traces back through archaeology and through history the movement between foraging, gathering societies to civilization. And like Nick Tossen's book Wild Therapy, he suggests that the fall from a relatively easy life— 20 or 30 hours work a week if you're a hunter-forager gatherer— with relatively few health problems compared to many modern humans to the stresses of modern-day living, the tipping point they both suggest is when farming started. And farming would have happened little by little over the generations. In Nick Totten's book, he suggests that we would have noticed, um, essentially at our compost toilets that the fruits and vegetables grew much better there, and perhaps that was the beginning. And maybe simply, or combined with that, that when you eat, when you choose the tastiest things to eat, the seeds go through you and they flourish, and of course they produce a plant which is sweeter, and so on through the generations until you get modern fruits and vegetables. In Humankind, he also suggests that suddenly discovering the Nile Delta and how easily things would grow when planted in the fertile soil was one of the stages. But either way, over many generations, there's this movement until suddenly human beings find themselves living in small houses, huts, in close quarters with other human beings, not walking very far, basically staying in the village or the hamlet, living next to animals, often sharing the same buildings as animals, working much, much, much harder for a much poorer quality diet, basically just grains, catching lots of diseases. Zootropic, is that the word? A bit like the coronavirus, you know, jumping from the animal kingdom to the human kingdom just because we're suddenly all schmoozed together in the same space. Then people start to get territorial. More and more land is parceled out to people. Human beings start working for other human beings, and it's only in the last 150, 200 years or so that most human beings haven't been directly, uh, almost owned by somebody else in a very hierarchical way. So I was thinking about that movement. In the book, he says some people think that the, the story of Eden, moving out of the Garden of Eden, represents that transition into moving into civilized, so-called civilized world. And partly I was thinking about it because my life is so complicated, all the trappings of modern life wearing you down. Oh, surely there's a simpler way of being than this. It doesn't feel like my brain and my body was built to cope with the level of complexity and the amount of information that I'm receiving. I was reflecting on this from a Buddhist point of view. When we look at the Buddha's teaching, he doesn't talk about any of this. But when we look at the story of his life and the example of his life, there's a very clear move from settled life. The Shakya were historically a race, a tribe of warriors, but had become settled farmers. They were creating democracy. They had this council of elders, and they were working out how to be civilized and settled people. The Buddha moved away from that into the jungle, the forests, with a robe or a couple of robes and a bowl, and spent much of the year on his own or with a few other people, and then other parts of the year traveling and teaching in other parts of the year in the rains retreat. And there's something quite tempting about that life. Of course, it's easy— the climate is easier in India to have that kind of lifestyle. And it was also made easier by— he had a lot of support from lay people, and the land wasn't parcelled up in the way that it is in modern Britain. Since the enclosures where every little piece of land is owned by somebody, it's much harder to walk into the forest. So there's the conundrum of modern life. And here we are saying Nembutsu together. And when we say Nembutsu, we're evoking the Pure Land, which is this kind of mirror of an idyllic world, this, this mirror of paradise. And we're evoking the spirit of the Buddha, which was the spirit of a person who simplified his life and chose to live in connection with the earth, in a community of other like-minded people, with relatively few wants and needs. And even though we're deeply embedded in a world that is very different from 2,500 years ago and even more different from the world of our original forager-gatherer communities. We still invite some of that spirit through the Nembutsu, that spirit of simplicity, into our lives. And for me, part of the practice is a deep Trust that the closer I bring myself to the Buddha, the more I lean into that spirit, the more naturally my life will tend to simplify itself, the less wants and needs I will have myself. And starting from where I am now with my own personal karma in the world that I'm in. I can't quite imagine that changing overnight. I can't imagine going off and living wild like Shen Yin did. That's not my path at the moment. But when I say the Nembutsu, I trust that little by little there is a transformation happening. That moves me and the people who are practicing with me closer to that life of simplicity. Namamitabodhi.
Amor a mi Jabu.
Amor a mi Jabu. Amor a mi Jabu.
Amor a mi Jabu.
We will now recite evening service together, which is on pages 13 and 14 of your service books.
With body, speech, and mind, humbly I prostrate and make offerings both set out and imagined. I confess my wrong deeds from all time. And rejoice in the virtues of all. Please stay until samsara ceases and turn the wheel of Dharma for us. I dedicate all virtues to great enlightenment. The ground sprinkled with perfume and spread with flowers, the great mountain full and sun and moon, seen as a Buddha land and offered us. May all beings enjoy such pure lands. Ee Jam Guru Ratna Manzala Kam Niryasayaami. By the grace that I receive through Amitābha's vows, may I be moved to deeds for the benefit of all. By the grace that I receive through Amitābha's vows, may I be moved to deeds for the benefit of all. By the grace that I receive through Amitabha's vows, may I be moved to deeds for the benefit of all. The purpose of our practice is to be a pure container wherein the common passions mature as higher wisdom. The ordinary outlook comes with bowing and contrition, facing up to my obstructions and seizing life's first essence. Devotion to my teacher Hence my smugness and dejection. Held by his compassion, I will find a straight direction. By refuge vows and precepts, recitation of the sutras, I grow through every challenge. In Bodhisattva aspiration, Cooperation in a sangha brings so many joys and freedoms. Through gentle words and gestures comes collective transformation. Settled faith and inner cleansing brings us home to life's great meaning. In the Four Divine Abidings, Buddha's light is always with us. Multitudes are disconcerted by impermanence and difference. With Dharma as true refuge, we dwell within the pure land. Now gratitude is overflowing, going forth, returning richly. I offer gifts of Dharma, Buddha's path bliss bestowing. We vow to save them all.
Inexhaustible are the rigid passions.
We vow to transform them all.
Immeasurable are the Dharma teachings.
We vow to master them all. Infinite is the We bow to Fatherhead completely. Hail to the mandala. Let us so be engulfed within its presence. Praises evermore, that by our own wills and vigilance may we our fetters cut away. May we within the temple of our own hearts dwell amidst the myriad mountains. Hail, hail, hail, Satya Robyn. Let us be engulfed within the mantra of the Sangha of Buddha. Heil, heil, the arrow of emptiness. Heil, heil.
Invocation of Vajrayana Buddha.
Hail, a beneficent mystic, the treasure.
Hail, hail. The golden bell rings but once.
Peace upon earth. Hello.
Namaste, hi everybody.
Hi, thank you.
You probably haven't seen Fi for ages, Becky, have you? Hello, Becky! Hi, just a corner of Brian. Oh yeah, it takes me a little while to get used to these things. Go again. Right, can't hear you, Becky, you're muted. Maybe that's on purpose. Yes, yeah, lovely to see you. Hi, Chris. Hi, Chris. Hi Mark. Hi, so anybody I don't know? We haven't met Mark. Can't see him at the moment. It's not usually like that. Becky, it's a lovely house. Yeah, it's really so in the countryside. Yeah, it's really nice. Lovely to see you. See you soon. She's gone. Yeah. Bye, see you soon. That's all on the video, I'm afraid.
