Satya Robyn leads a Buddhist practice session with guided sitting meditation, group chanting of the Nembutsu, recitation of refuges and precepts, and instructions for prostrations. The opening teaching addresses textual interpretation and why practice matters more than doctrine.
Chapters
Welcome everybody to our Saturday morning practice time together on another rainy morning here in Malvern. The garden's becoming like a swamp after all this. We had like 3 nights of rain and then heavy snow, and then the snow melted and more nights of rain. I haven't got anything significant to say about the weather. It's just a way of me saying some words as I sort of settle into thinking about giving a little talk. Welcome, Kema. So I follow a Sanskrit scholar on Twitter. He's very precise and exacting in his translations, and he's interested in making sense of early Buddhist teachings. What was the Buddha really trying to say? What were those teachings really trying to get at. And recently I read a couple of reviews of other people's papers or books that he'd done, and these books, if you read them as a Buddhist teaching or a philosophical teaching or sort of psychological, um, model were very coherent. And yet, when you drill down into the translations of the Sanskrit words that these books were based on, according to this scholar, what you find is that the meanings in some cases are subtly different, and in some cases are fairly significantly different. And what the author has done has taken their idea of Buddhism— this is their kind of practice, this is their understanding of the teaching— and to some degree, um, sort of squeezed and twisted the original meanings of the words to make it fit what they would like it to be saying. And this is quite a common thing in Buddhism. You will see through the ages teachers of various Buddhist traditions saying, well, this what I am teaching is what the Buddha really taught, or what the Buddha really meant, even when someone else who is teaching something quite different we'll also be saying, well, this is what the Buddha really meant, this is what the Buddha was teaching. Now, he can't have been teaching both of those things because they contradict each other. And yet we make this claim for authenticity in this way. And the more that this scholar that I've been reading— I'm sort of wary of saying his name in case I'm misrepresenting his views. But I think this is fairly close to what he was saying. The more that he studied these original Sanskrit meanings of the words, the meanings of these original Sanskrit words, and translated them more and more accurately, what he discovered is there is a sort of incoherence within the original Buddhist teachings. Teachings like karma death and rebirth, and this old question of what is it that gets reborn if there's no self, which Buddhist teachers through the ages have sort of come up with different creative ways of answering. There isn't a coherent answer to some of those questions in the original canon. It's not entirely possible to square the circle. And if, like me, you have a brain that likes to be able to see what this thing leads to this thing, and this thing leads to that thing, can be very frustrating to find out there's these sort of gaps in the teaching. And yet, he says, despite knowing this, he calls himself a Buddhist because the practice works. And I've been sitting in this kind of place myself over the last week. Feeling a little bit skeptical of some of the Buddhist teachings or presentations, noticing how disparate they are, partly because I'm doing work in groups where there's lots of different Buddhists, and I'm trying to find a way to speaking to Buddhists of all traditions, and that's kind of impossible because they believe so many different things. And yet, despite all of that complication and confusion and difference, what I find myself coming back to is, for me, the practice works. When I sit and say Nembutsu quietly to myself, there is enough of a sense of connection with something that is completely loving and completely wise and beyond my small ordinary mind and thoughts that I can say It works. This practice gifts me something that I don't get from other places, or perhaps it reminds me that the gift is already flowing towards me. And you can understand the whole of the Buddhist teachings As a way of trying to describe in many different voices, in many different ways, to many different people, the experience of this practice works. The Buddha had a profound spiritual experience when he was practicing beneath the Bodhi tree. And he was reluctant to speak about it. In the sutras it says he had the thought, nobody will understand, nobody will understand what I've just been through. And a god comes and says to him, a few people will understand, go and find them and teach. And the teachings are useful. They can provide a mirror for us. They can show us where the edges of our own practice are. They can show us where our attachments are and our own moral failings or lack of faith. But they are all provisional attempts to describe something that isn't quite possible to fit completely into words. So as much as I enjoy Buddhist teachings, right now what I appreciate most of all is that The practice works. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
So we're going to a period of quiet sitting together. I am going to recite the Nembutsu quietly as I sit. As I breathe in, I will say Namo to myself. As I breathe out, I will say Amitabha. Namo meaning I take refuge, or I bow to, or call out to Amitabha, Amitabha Buddha. I invite you to do the same. Excuse me. We'll move into a period of chanting. We'll chant Amitabha. Please do join in from at home, but also keep yourself muted because Zoom can't cope with people chanting in English. Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabh.
Amitabh.
Amitabh.
Amitabh.
Amitabha. Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabh.
Amitabh.
Amitabh. Amitabh.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha.
Amitabh.
Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh.
Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabh! Amitabh! Amitabha! Amita—
Aamiitaan. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. So I now lead you in reciting the refuges and the lay precepts. Please repeat after me.
I take refuge in the Buddha .
I take refuge in the Buddha Namo Buddhaya , Nam-myoho-renge-kyo— I take refuge in the Dharma —
I take refuge in the Dharma , Dam-may-a— I take refuge in the Sangha —
With faith in three jewels ...
...with faith in the Three Jewels...?
I pray that I may not to take life.
I pray that I may not take life.
With faith of The Three Jewels—
With Faith In 3 jewels I pray that may not steal—I Pray That May Not Steal—with Faith Of The three jeweled stones—and then "Faith" again—"I prayer"—that might fall into sexual misconduct…I Prayer That Might Fall Into Sexual Misconduct—with Faith And Then...Three Jewelled Stones..."with faithful jewel"...and than "...Prayer That It's A Me Make Up For Wrong Speech." I pray that I may not fall into wrong speech.
With faith in the Three Jewels, with faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may avoid intoxication.
I pray that I may avoid intoxication. 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 forfeit completely.
Now we'll stand to make 3 prostrations to the Buddha. You can either make prostrations to a Buddha in your own space or to the one on the screen behind us. We typically, we make a prostration full to the ground, putting our head touching our heads to the earth and raising our hands above our head. If your body allows, you're welcome to join in with that. Otherwise, just an ordinary bow. And as we prostrate, we'll chant Namo Amitabha.
Namah Amida Butsu. Namah Amida Butsu.
Namah Amida Butsu.
Namah Amida Butsu.
Namoh Amida.
Namoh Amida.
Namoh Amida be. Namoh Amida be. Namoh Amitabh. Namoh Amitabh.
Namoh Amitabh.
Namoh Amitabh.
Thanks everybody. So we will bow to each other and to the Buddha. Okay, and then I'll ask you, if you're willing to, to unmute, and we'll recite this verse together that I've just put in the chat box as a way of finishing the formal practice. Blessed by Amitābha's light. May I care for all living beings and the Holy Earth.
