Practice - Chocolate and sacred presence

Yes, so welcome to people watching on YouTube later on. This is our morning practice session, and welcome to Tony. I already said welcome to him before the recording started, but nice to see you. And welcome to everybody in person and We always begin with a short reading that has been written by somebody from the community sharing some insight or learning or experience that they've had. This morning it was written by Satya's friend, Apollodi, who isn't here, so Philip is going to read the Dharma glimpse.

Thank you.

So this is a chocolate Dharma glimpse. Makes sense, it's a friend. I was in a small supermarket with my partner. I wanted a sandwich before I headed off for an evening study group, and he was getting food for him and our son to have dinner. I had a very small amount of money left in my bank account before payday. I wanted to buy some chocolate but could only afford the sandwich. He didn't know any of that. I kept it to myself. Coincidentally and out of the blue, he offered to pay for my food. It was an everyday kindness and something he's good at. But instead of saying thank you, enjoying the moment and the kindness, I found myself saying, well, if you're paying for my food, I'll get some chocolate too. Leaving him at the till, putting the shopping through, I rushed up the aisle to grab the chocolate. I did, of course, say thank you, but I was quite overwhelmed with the speed with which my mind had grasped Habit and craving are strong, and my addiction to chocolate is one I regularly struggle with. Amongst all this, I could hear the Buddha whispering to me, slow down. There are gifts here for you that you are missing. Sometimes I miss out on the abundance I already have when I'm grasping for more. The chocolate was nice, but in many ways the kindness was much, much sweeter.

Namomi dabu.

So I said I'll talk through what we're going to do as we did, but I also want to put a sort of caveat on that, which is what I will say are just pointers really and can't encompass the actual experience of what you might receive or experience or find meaningful, because there are so many layers of that, and some of those only become apparent when we do the same thing over and over again. So I will say some things, which is maybe enough to sort of give some context to what we're doing, but I encourage you to hold that lightly and really trust the experience of doing or being rather than how you might expect it to be based on anything that I say or describe. So we're going to go into a period of quiet meditation together. Meditation really has two purposes. One is to calm and settle the mind and the nervous system, and the other is to provide a space space for curiosity. And some practices encourage more of one, and some practices encourage more of the other. My experience is whatever the instruction, naturally both tend to arise. But we'll begin this morning by just taking a moment to notice how we're sitting. You might want to just sway left and rise a little and forwards and backwards until you find that easy upright position that's recommended. And then bringing awareness to your breath, noticing the air entering and leaving at the tip of the nose— cooler air entering, warmer air leaving, not trying to breathe in any particular way, just noticing how it is moment to moment, noticing how the body changes with the breath. And if, when other thoughts or feelings come into your awareness, just noticing what they are. Oh, look, I'm thinking about such and such. And then gently bringing awareness back to the breath. We'll sit for about 10 minutes. Thank you, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Buddhism is about suffering and going beyond suffering, and the wide variety of Buddhist traditions different teachings and practices and emphasis to support practitioners in doing that. How do we meet suffering with compassion? How do we go beyond it? And one of the ways that we emphasize in this tradition is connecting to the spirit of the Buddha that is available to us in the present moment. Having a sense that there is a kind of field of loving kindness around us that is available if we turn to it. What other traditions might call a sacred presence, as Karen Armstrong put it in her biography of the Buddha that I've been reading recently. So we do that by turning towards Amida Buddha, who is here on my left, who is an archetypal Buddha, not someone that existed in history, but a figure that stands in for complete acceptance, complete compassion, complete loving kindness. So we turn our heart towards those qualities, and one of the— everything we do really is supporting that movement, but one of the ways we particularly do that is by reciting this Buddha's name. And this morning we're going to use the word Amitābha, which is the Sanskrit form of Amida. So we'll chant that for a little while as a very basic melody. The word is Amitābha. Do join in when you catch on to what we're doing. And yeah, the spirit of it is recognizing that we as ordinary human beings are turning towards that unconditional compassion that is flowing towards us in every moment.

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. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Ame Saba. Ame Saba. Ame Saba. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha.

Ame Sama.

Ame Sama. Ame Sama. Ameesha. Ameesha.

Ameesha. Thank you.

So now we're going to recite the refuges and precepts and bodhisattva vows together, which you can find on the slip of paper next to you of the refuges and precepts. I'll invite you to repeat after me, so you don't need the paper, but the Bodhisattva vows are call and response. These are words that Buddhists have been saying for generations since the Buddha's time, 2,500 years ago. And actually the lay precepts are even older still. So partly we recite them to remind us that we are in a lineage, that we have received something from many, many spiritual ancestors, and partly because they point to what an ethical life looks like. They're not something to use as a sort of punitive measuring stick, but hopefully something to inspire and guide us. The refuges are the things we experiment Trusting in, as Buddhists, the Buddha, an awakened teacher, and standing in for all awakened teachers, the Dharma, those teachings that get passed on, and the Sangha, the community of people engaged in learning those teachings, putting them into practice, attempting to go beyond suffering in their own lives. So please repeat after me. For refuge I go to the Buddha. Namo Buddhaya. For refuge I go to the Dharma. Namu Dharmaya. For refuge I go to the Sangha. Namo Sanghaya. With faith in the Three Jewels— I pray that I may not take life! With faith in the Three Jewels—I pray that I may not steal! With faith in the Three Jewels—I pray that I may not fall into sin! Sexual misconduct— I pray that I may not fall into sexual misconduct—with faith in the Three Jewels—I pray that I may not fall into wrong speech—with faith in the Three Jewels—I pray that I may avoid intoxication—no blame—be kind—love each other more than yourself—and be free from hatred. Thank you very much for your attention today! Love everything. 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 bow to master them all.

Infinite is the Buddha's way.

We bow before faith completely.

So first of all, I really want to thank you for being here on such a beautiful sunny morning when there's so many options of what people can be doing on Saturday mornings, and you've chosen to come and do this very odd thing of sitting and being silent and chanting, and in a moment we're going to make prostrations, which is very counter-cultural.

So I appreciate it. It's nice to have a full shrine room.

A few weeks ago, I read an essay by a Zen teacher, Dōshō Port, who was a student of Katagiri Roshi, who was one of the first Buddhist teachers whose work I encountered. And he was describing this balance in Buddhism between awakening and ethical guidelines, and suggesting that modern Buddhism had lost some of that spirit of awakening. Awakening, I guess, to what Karen Armstrong called sacred presence. Because in the '60s, everybody was into getting their minds blown and having these really peak experiences of interconnectedness. With all things and feeling one with everything and having a really strong sense of divine in their practice. But maybe they weren't so integrated and grounded, and, and their lives were a bit messy, and they were impacting other people in unskillful ways. So then there's this reminder: we must fold in the precepts, we must have this container that supports us to be curious about how we're contributing to harming others, how we're contributing to caring for others. And much of Buddhism in the West took that on board and became almost quite secular for various reasons. And I'm not opposed to secular Buddhism. It was my way into the practice, so I'm very grateful. For it. But I also appreciate Doshō port's point that perhaps the pendulum has swung too far. I mean, not for us in this temple because we're emphasizing sacred presence all the time, but generally in Buddhism, perhaps that the pendulum has swung too far and really wanting to encourage people to to be curious about awakening and what that means in the center of a Buddhist practice. And as I said when I was saying I would talk through what we were doing, of course, the word awakening and sacred presence and the things I'm about to carry on saying are all provisional in some way. They point to something that can't be quite encapsulated. The experience keeps going beyond what can be described, but it includes things like a deep sense of connection to our ancestors. It includes things like an embodied experience, a non-intellectual experience of being connected to the earth and to all living things and appreciating that, that As William Blake said, you can find the whole of the world in a grain of sand. And having a kind of mind-opening, heart-opening experience of that, it includes the experience of finding a deep sense of love in ourselves and in the world. That is beyond ordinary thinking somehow. Maybe even includes receiving something new, some guidance, some new ideas, some insight that changes the direction, that changes the course that we're on. And these experiences or even the idea of these experiences support us to meet what is happening here and now in our present lives, to meet our own personal suffering, to meet the suffering of those around us. Knowing that we're connected in this web with the whole of life creates some space, creates some compassion. That allows us to be with our own pain and others' people's pain more easily. Knowing that we are loved and that love is available provides that as well. So all of the things that we do here in the shrine room is building a container that we might receive some of that kind of thing every now and again. And I suppose I'm thinking about this because I have been reading Karen Armstrong's book, and she talks— she very clearly has a sense of the spirit that the Buddha lived his life in, which is the one that I'm describing now, but also a very strong sense of the Buddha's clarity of message. This is the way to do this. This is the way to do that. These are the ethical precepts that work for this time. And in some ways my life is very far away from what the Buddha prescribed for his disciples, partly because I'm not living 2,500 years ago in the forests and jungles of northern India. And I found I was getting a little bit disheartened. Oh, I'm comparing myself. I'm not living up to those things. But actually, I think the important thing to carry forward is that spirit, and that the practices that we are doing make space for that spirit to come through. And I really trust that that is what is happening, even if in some ways it looks very different to what the Buddha was doing 2,500 years ago.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

As I said, one of the things that we do to create a container for that is to make prostrations. So in a moment, Satya will ring a bell and I'll invite you to stand with some space in front of you pointing to the main shrine, and then I'll describe how we do prostrations in this tradition.

So do as much as your body and mind allow at this time. We're going to make 3 prostrations as we—

for the Buddha, for the Dharma, for the Sangha that we said earlier. And with our hands, we make the prayer symbol, gassho, or Anjali.

Which represents a closed lotus, but also the potential for enlightenment, the potential for flowering in all of us.

And first we raise it above our whole bodies, so we're saying with my whole body, and then here in front of our lips, which is with my words, my thoughts and my words, my kind of intellectual arms.

And then here in front of our hearts with our feelings and our spirit. And then we go down to the floor to kneeling, and we lift our palms above our head, which is the sort of going beyond the ego, if you like.

And this is where it gets complicated. We are also going to chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo at the same time. Don't worry if you don't get it, that's fine. Plenty of people in the room know what they're doing.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is a Japanese form of the chant that we did earlier, so it's just invoking that same spirit. Let's give it a go. Beth, you just come back here so everyone's got a bit more room. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, make sure you've got a bit of space in front of you. Namoh Amida.

Namoh Amida Bu. Namoh Amida Bu.

Namoh Amida Bu. Na mo amida na mo amida na mo amida na mo amida We dedicate the merits of this incense offering to all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas throughout space and time. May we pray to the Buddha herself, directing our careful efforts, our whole heart with awareness, and the fruit of understanding so delightful. May we and all beings be companions of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. May we awaken from get rid of and realize our true home. So we'll return to standing in our places.

Now, as we come to the end of the service, we're going to bow to each other, first to one side and then to the other.

And then to the main shrine.

We'll tidy our places and back to our seats.

Satya Robyn.

So as Satya said, at 10:30 there will be a talk in here on joy. We'll put the kettle on before then if people want to get a quick drink, and we'll change the chairs around in here. Yeah, there's a toilet at the top of the stairs if anyone wants to use it. The donation bowl is in the hallway on the table. There's also some booklets there that describe a little bit more about the practice if you want something to take away and read. And we'll finish this section by reading the closing verse, which is on the top of one of the sides of the piece of paper next to you. Blessed by Amitābha's light, may we care for all living things and the holy earth. Namaste. Thank you, everybody. We'll just have an informal exit from the shrine.