Evening service 5th August

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 vast samsara, 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? Whilst we're young and strong, this is each year the dharma. Let us strive and diligently seek the path to eternity.

Ameeetah. Ameeetah. Aamiita. Aamiita. Amitabh. Amitabh.

We will recite the Summary of Faith and Practice together, which is on the first page of your service books.

Summary of faith and practice.

For those having a karmic affinity with Amitabha Buddha, wishing to practice a religious life in truly simple faith, freeing themselves of sophistication and attachment to all forms of cleverness, the method of opening oneself to Amitabha's grace It's the practice of Nyingma with body, speech, and mind, particularly verbal recitation of Marmalami Duggal. This is not something done as a form of meditation, nor is it based on study, understanding, and wisdom, or the revelation of deep meaning. Deep meaning is indeed there, for the Nyingma Tsu is a window through which the whole universe of Buddha's teaching can be perceived in all its depth. But none of this is either necessary or even helpful to success in the practice. Rather, such study cultivates secondary faculties to be held separate from the mind of practice itself. The primary practice requires only one essential Realize that you are a totally foolish being who understands nothing, but who can with complete trust recite Namo Amitabha. Know that this will generate rebirth in the Pure Land without even knowing what rebirth in the Pure Land truly is. This is the practice for ignorant beings, and ignorance is essential for its accomplishment. This practice automatically encompasses the three minds and the mind of contrition as a fourth. To pursue something more profound or more sophisticated, or to have a theory, or to think that understanding will yield greater enlightenment than this, is to be misled and to fall back into self-power, whereby the whole practice is spoiled. However wise, learned, or skilled you may be, set it aside and be the foolish being, completely in the performance of the practice. Nothing else is required, and anything else is too much. Faith and practice cannot be differentiated. The Buddha body is delineated by the precepts. How deficient we are by comparison! By our daily difficulty in the preceptual life, we awaken to the presence of the myriad karmic obstacles. Without which we would already perceive the land of love and bliss, we would be as the Vow Body of Buddha. Thus we know in experience that we are foolish beings of wayward passion. This knowledge of our condition is part of the essential basis when it gives rise to contrition. Thus all obstacles become impediments to faith unless they experience contrition and letting go. Saving grace, that's what we fear by Shandao's dream and advice to Tao Tzu, only comes through the Sangha Mon. If you can perform the practice in this simple-minded way, Amida will receive you and you may fear for nothing since all is completely assured. Dwelling in this settled faith, you may then use your secondary faculties, your knowledge and skills and accumulated experience, as tools for helping all sentient beings. But do not then think that anything of relevance to your own salvation is thereby accomplished, or that you are making something of yourself. Whatever merit there may be in your actions of this kind, immediately and totally dedicate it to the benefit of others, that they may enter the Pure Land, and that you yourself may not be encumbered by a consciousness of virtue which will only contaminate the practice. As Honin says, without pedantic airs, fervently recite the name.

Welcome. Inside the physical room today we have Fi and Jahmei and Brian and David and Caspar, and in the virtual room we have Mark and Becky and Jan and Liz and Sophie— welcome Sophie— and Veronique and Andrew. I don't think we've quite got enough chairs here, so it's just as well some of you are in the Zoom room. So a special welcome if this is your first service today. I haven't given you any instruction or idea of what we're doing, so I'm glad you're still here. This is the bit where I give a dharma talk, and I had the idea that my dharma talk would appear here when I read Summary of Faith and Practice. Summary of Faith and Practice is our foundational text, our core text, which Dharma Vidya, our Buddhist teacher, wrote as kind of inspired by a text that Honin wrote just before he died, which was intended to sum up the whole of Pure Land Buddhism in as short a time as possible. So Dharmavijja's version is a bit longer, but there's something about the text that every time you read it, every time I read it, something new emerges. And one of our colleagues, one of our colleagues and friends, Rich Ollier, has recently completed his PhD based on what we just read. So he spent many years interviewing people about it and researching, and I can't wait to read it. But that gives you an idea of how deeply it can be unpacked. So I'm not going to talk about the whole of it. I just wanted to pull out the phrase, "The Nembutsu is a window through which the whole universe of Buddha's teaching can be perceived." in all its depth. So Nembutsu is our core practice as Pure Land Buddhists. We very simply say the name of the Buddha, and in saying the name of the Buddha, we are taking refuge in the Buddha's qualities, the Buddha's essence. We're allowing the Buddha's influence to enter into us, and we say the Nembutsu by saying 'Nam-myoho-renge-kyo,' which you'll hear a lot. We also say Amitābha, which is the name of the Buddha, which we chanted as we walked around. Whatever language we use, whatever words we use, we are calling out as small, vulnerable foolish beings to the infinite wisdom, patience, and care of Amitābha, Amitābha Buddha. And so what does this mean, the universe, the Buddha's teachings? What, what is that, and how does the Nembutsu show us what it is? It's a good question. Now I've got to answer it. There's something for me about the simplicity of the practice that allows us to get a handle on what we're doing, which is acknowledging that we don't have all the answers and acknowledging the possibility that something out there does. Something out there knows more than we do about what we need, about what's happening in our lives, in other people's lives, about what's happening on the earth at the moment. And in that narrowing down, in that simplifying, of that question that we all carry with us is— there's a sense of allowing ourselves to open up to something that comes from outside and is absorbed into us, that very slowly or very quickly or both lets us relax. It lets us lean back and surrender and let go of having to be the one that knows it all, having to be the one that's in control, having to be in charge. And in that interaction, in that relationship that develops, everything else that happens can be seen through that lens, that there is more going on than we know and that we can trust it. That experience of trust might when we first practice, we might just have to trust our teacher because we don't trust it, and our experience is that we haven't been able to trust it. But through relationship with someone who does trust it, we begin to experiment in just leaning in a little bit and seeing what happens. And there's something for me that's really cumulative about that. There's something that builds up over time. And that we have an experience over and over of trusting something bigger than us and being held. And there's also something that can be very sudden, so it may be that we have an experience of being held or receiving something from outside that feels like it changes everything. As I begin to talk about this, I'm beginning to get a glimpse of the universe of the Buddha's teachings, and that I could probably talk to you for the next 3 years and still only begin to cover a fraction of what I've received from the Buddha, never mind the whole of the Buddha's teachings. I love the little metaphors in the Buddhist teachings about how unlikely things are. There's a story about a turtle— is it a turtle?— coming up randomly in the ocean and just so happening to get a tenpi piece on its back.

In the traditional story, it floats through a yoke like you would put under the backs of an ox. I don't think there were tenpi pieces. Well, it's where the story originates from.

I'm mixing my stories.

That's how folk lore works.

It changes in the telling.

So anyway, there's something very, very, very unlikely about that happening, and yet it does. So there's something about— Buddhism is full of these stories about miracles happening, impossibilities happening, things coming together in a way that feels beyond belief. And that's the kind of sense I have as I begin talking, is that the things I could try and explain or tell you about are just like a speck of dust in a desert. But that doesn't matter too much because the speck of dust, maybe let's say a speck of sand in the desert, also contains the desert. That there's something about that, that small thing pointing towards the rest of it. So it doesn't really matter too much where we look, which window we look through, which grain of sand we happen to pick up. Another metaphor, or another story, is about Indra's net, where each Each jewel on the net reflects all the other jewels, so we can pick any jewel. In this school of Buddhism, we have picked the Nembutsu. That is the practice that we have as our foundation, as our home base, and so we do a lot of the Nembutsu. But the Nembutsu is only a window through which the whole universe of Buddhist teachings teaching can be perceived in all its depth. So we don't need to worry too much if this is the right place for us or somewhere else. We just need to be open to receiving. We just need to be open to listening. Looking and allowing the Buddha to show us what we need to know. If we're searching too hard, then we're not going to find it. So I don't know if I've made any sense at all this evening. I've made sense in my head, so that's something. And much like the Samaya Faith in Practice, there may just be a sentence or a word that kind of goes in and and resonate somewhere. And as we sit in meditation, you might just want to allow that word, or that feeling, or that question to just sit in you and allow it some space. So we'll now do some quiet sitting together, and We always begin meditation with bells and finish with bells. Bells in the shrine room are a bit like punctuation, so they tell us when to do the things we're doing and are a kind of a container. Grateful to Fi, who you won't be able to see, but she's just over there and she makes really beautiful bells.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

I forgot to welcome Veronica. Welcome, Veronica. And in a minute we'll stand and do prostrations, which are another window through which the whole universe of Buddhist teaching can be perceived in Whitstep. And then we'll do some liturgy, which is in our service book. I haven't written it on the chat on the computer, so if someone else is willing to put the link in the chat for people that haven't got it, that would be much appreciated. Ameedah Book. I mean someone on there rather than you.

Do you want me to say what it is? Yeah. It's http://bit.ly/AmeedahBook.

Namaste, Ameedah Book.

Namaste.

Namaste.

Namaste. Namaste.

We will now recite the full 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 Buddha. Please stay until samsara ceaseth 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 of sun and moon, By the grace that I receive through Adi Tathagata's mouth, May I be moved to deeds for the benefit of all. By the grace that I receive throughout Mithalpa's vows, may I be moved to deeds for the benefit of all. By the grace that I receive throughout Mithalpa'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 preliminary outlook comes with bowing and contrition. Facing up to my obstructions and seizing life's first essence. Devotion to my teacher ends my smugness and dejection. Helped by his compassion, I will find a straight direction. By refuge vows and precepts, recitation of the sutras, I grow through every challenge. Embodysatva 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. Our gratitude is overflowing. Going forth, returning richly, I offer gifts of Dharma. Buddha's path is bestowed. We vow to save them all.

Inexhaustible are the ancient teachings.

We vow to transform them all.

Immeasurable are the Dharma teachings.

We vow to master them all.

Infinites the Buddha's way, we bow to full faith, complete peace. Invocation of Avalokiteshvara.

Hail Satya Robyn, let us so be engulfed in its praises evermore. That by our own wills and vigilance may we our fetters cast away. May we within the temple of our own hearts dwell amidst the myriad mountains.

Hail! Hail! Hail!

Invocation of Maha Kala.

Let us be engulfed within the mandala of the Sangha of Buddha.

Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh.

The Arrow of Emptiness.

Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh.

Invocation of Vairochana Buddha.

Hail, magnificent mystic, the treasure!

Hail, hail, hail!

The golden bell rings but once.

Peace upon the earth.

We bow to our seats and tidy our seats.

Arahatu.