Practice - consolation

Welcome if it's your first time here. I'm grinning because I'm happy to see all the people that are also joining us on Zoom this morning. We've got Barbara and Chris and Rob and Angela and Ellie. So pretty— we've just got more people in the shrine room, just, but where our numbers are swelled by our virtual friends. And so we always begin with a reading, and I'm basically copying Keima, who ran practice on Wednesday, because Keima asked us all to read The Life of No Regret, and I enjoyed it so much I thought I'd do to do it again. So there's— there isn't one in every space, but because there's not so many of us here, you might be able to find one each. It's called The Life of No Regrets. Um, is it online anywhere? Just wondering if I can, uh, if you— if people at home, if you want to Google The Life of No Regrets, you can join us. But if not, just listen. That's probably just as That's good. Don't worry, love, we'll, we'll, I'll prepare better another time. So this text is basically, in Buddhism there are lots of kind of repeating stories or repeating archetypes. This story is, this, this is a kind of a declaration really of somebody who is inspired by someone else, a Buddha, an awakened being. And it leads them to want to do the same, to become enlightened themselves and to help all beings. So as we read it, we're also putting ourselves into the position of the one who's inspired, the one who is lit up and illuminated by a great being, and There probably aren't any Buddhas in this room, real live ones, but we do have lots of representations of Buddhas. And we also have the earth, we have the sky to inspire us with its vastness and its perfection. So, and as you recite, you can keep that inspiration in mind. Do you want one yourself? There are, there are. Is there a spare one over there? No, Philip needs one.

Oh, are there?

That's where they all went. Ah, that's where Gema put them. So if you're happy to just say the title and then do the bell at the end of the title.

A Life of No Regret.

Your radiant face, like a mountain peak catching the first burst of morning light, has awesome and unequaled majesty. Like black ink by comparison are the sun, the moon, or the Māni treasure. Tathāgata, such is your incomparable face. The melody of your enlightenment fills the world. Rare and precious are your precepts, learning, energy, meditation, wisdom, and amazing virtue. The oceanic Dharma of all Buddhas, which you fathom to its deepest depths, dispels the three poisons from the heart. You are like a lion, valiant and divinely pure. Great wisdom, deep wisdom, awesome light reverberation. A prayer I make, a Buddha to become equal to you, my Dharma King. To lead all beings to the other shore, leaving none behind. The Six Paramitas to perfect, with Prajna at their head. Should I become Buddha, I will fulfill this prayer completely. To everyone, I'll bring great peace. To Buddhas countless as sand grains, my offerings I make. And do not flinch from the trials of the incomparable way, powerful, straight, and true. Though Buddhas and worldly realms be numberless like sand, by sheer power of aspiration I'll fill them all with light. Let me become a Buddha, and the multitude of beings will all enjoy my primordial nirvana world. By indiscriminate compassion, I will enlighten all. Reborn here from no matter where, in my country their hearts will lighten and be joyful, happy, and at ease. Oh, you Buddha, witness my vow, my true aspiration. Establishing my vow on you gives me the strength to fulfill it. Buddhas throughout space and time of unimpeded wisdom always witness my heart's practice. No matter the obstacles, the hardships, my practice will endure through all without regret. We will now sit quietly together for a while. You can either do what you usually do when you sit quietly, focus on your breath, or just allow your body to become still. Or you might want to sit with the radiance of a mountain peak at the first burst of morning light, and imagine the Buddha's light shining over you. After some quiet sitting, we'll chant together, and we will chant the word Amitābha, which is the Buddha of— in the name of the Buddha of infinite light. So do join in with the chanting when you can.

Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh.

Amitabha.

Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh.

We'll now recite the refuges, precepts, and vows together, which are on the small liturgy sheet, but it's mostly call and response. So 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 Buddha.

Namo Buddha.

For refuge I go to the Dharma.

For refuge I go to the Dharma.

All that guides us to wisdom and compassion.

All that guides us to wisdom and compassion.

Namo Dharmaya.

Namo Dharmaya.

For refuge I go to the Sangha.

For refuge I go to the Sangha.

Those who live in the Buddha's light.

Those who live in the Buddha's light.

For refuge I go to the Earth.

For refuge I go to the Earth.

The holy ground of awakening.

The holy ground of awakening.

Namo Bhumyai.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

With faith in the Four Refuges—

with faith in the Four Refuges—

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—

I pray that I may become aware—

of when I take what is not freely given.

Of when I take what's not freely given—

—I pray that may become aware of it! Of when fall into sexual misconduct—I'm sorry for my pronunciation.— —may have fallen to wrong-speech—and while falling through all this mess; prays at time he come away from being intoxicated... He comes out sick? Yes.

Okay then we'll do one more round but you've got 2 minutes left so let me give everyone some space here because if anyone wants any questions they can just pop them up on video chat there or email us later today too okay guys?! So now your turn please someone else who hasn't asked anything yet. Anyone want something answered about their question right offhand before our next speaker goes around ask him an No open-ended thing like "Why did God create things?" Or maybe even think blame.

deep down why does life exist anyway!?

That will be interesting isn't it whatever answer people get back from Jesus Christ himself alright everybody well done thank you very much indeed yes welcome ladies first go No ahead Brigitte would love to hear yours yeah sure hi Stephen hello Mummy blame. how're ya doing good thanks sir nice seeing every single person uh watching live tonight um wow such wonderful energy really amazing energies coming across actually beautiful experience no doubt whatsoever bye-bye see y'all soon goodbye Be mumsie hey sweetheart oh looky-loo baby girl she kind.

woke her head already awesome stuff going on over here aren't we lovely boys excuse myself quickly somebody had said 'why didn't Buddha say' was his last message anybody know which bit exactly Bruce Lee says don't kill yourself by killing Be others haha excellent point anyways moving along ahem move forward shall we kind.

most importantly these days especially during COVID-19 stay safe keep each other healthy make peace among yourselves blessings upon those struggling still fighting against racism anti-Semitism xenophobia hate crimes terrorism etcetera et cetera amen Amen Love Brother Pauline has raised hand wait until after Steve finishes speaking though haven't seen Steven anywhere huh everything. hmm 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 vow to master them all.

Infinite is the Buddha's way.

We vow to fulfill it completely.

So there is an American magazine called Tricycle, and they do a newsletter called Daily Dharma where they take a quote from something that someone said in the magazine over the past I don't know, 40 years, 50 years, and send it out to everybody as a little kind of dose of wisdom. Um, and the title of this morning's was Finding Consolation. I thought, ah, I recognize that phrase, and it was me from an article I wrote a long time ago called On Wanting to Sound Good, which I can't even remember. So here's the quote: Spiritual life is about finding consolation. It's about finding that steady place where we can be soothed and where we feel like we're accepted in order to go forth and do the things we need to do in the world and face the things we need to face. Pretty good, eh? And it feels really appropriate to me right now, just in terms of friends and colleagues I know who are suffering and what's happening in the world, the, the kind of poly crises that are happening, unfolding inexorably. I was talking to some fellow Buddhist teachers yesterday, and we were just reflecting on how they were saying it's hard for their groups to kind of turn up and commit to practice, and because so much of their brains is taken up with the political situation in America. These are American Buddhist teachers, and the climate crisis, which is becoming more and more difficult to be in denial about. I think that as the weather visibly changes, that it's harder for people to keep that kind of wall of denial up. Walking around the garden this morning, I was very conscious of the dryness, you know, the leaves that are dropping. I read this week that It's not autumn. It's not autumn early. It's basically the trees dying a bit, uh, because of the drought. And I've been very taken up in the past couple of weeks with, uh, with disappointment and fear and, uh, disappointment, fear. Anger at the flags, that the English flags that have been going up, um, all over the place, not for the women's rugby. And, uh, and what we can do in the face of that. What, what, what are we actually able to do? And we can do things, and I, and I think we should do things One of the things that's happened on Facebook is that there's a new group which I'd encourage everyone to join, even if you don't live in Worcestershire, which is, uh, Worcestershire Against Hate. And there's already people who are printing posters that they're hoping to get into shops locally in Worcester, and various things that are happening, and people feeling a bit safe to kind of share their own reactions to what's been happening. But that's, that's all hard. It's actually really hard. Ironically, in the same group, I wasn't gonna talk about this, but this can be my dharma talk. Ironically, in the same group, I had an experience yesterday. I'd said something about that I really wanted us to try and hold onto the name of the— several people were kind of, you know, saying sarcastic things about people putting the flags up, which I totally get. But I was saying something about, you know, it's really important to me that we hold on to not hating them, because then that's perpetuating something. The Buddha said that only love can conquer hate. Hate just perpetuates hate. And in response, a woman— I can only really call it a diatribe— had a diatribe against me because she knew I was Buddhist. And she felt that Buddhism was really guilty of kind of pacifism, of standing by while bad things happened. And she was quite angry at me. I replied, I'm like, I'm not really sure why you're upset with me. You don't actually know me. But it was, it was an experience. It was a kind of a parallel process. It was her experience was all Buddhists are dot, dot, dot. And you know, there's probably some truth in it that, that there are, there is that danger of falling into quietism, of, of not speaking up, of just kind of, you know, we'll just sit quietly and hold the space. Um, but I wanted to say to her, I've been arrested 5 times for ecoactivism. What are you, what are you talking about? I'm not, you know, sitting at home meditating. But I didn't say that, but And we actually had a conversation which turned out fine. And she'd been, she'd had some really bad experiences of mindfulness being prescribed in a way that was actually really unhelpful. So she had her own, she had her own reasons for being upset with me. But this is life, you know, even within that safe space, I said something that felt very sincere and kind of open-hearted, and then was met with being treated as if I was the same as a whole group of people. And the group of people, she wasn't even getting that quite right. And what I was going to talk about in my Dharma talk is the Four Noble Truths. The first noble truth is dukkha, which is that we can't avoid suffering. That suffering is interwoven into the world, that it, it's, um, it happens. It will continue to happen. Nothing we can do will erase that. The Buddha, once he was enlightened, would sometimes send people away because he just had enough of people. And he got things wrong. He made mistakes and was corrected by people around him, and he suffered physically. And dukkha will be with us as long as we live. But the good news about Buddhism, the good news about all, all spiritual traditions is that there is something that we can rely on that allows us to transform that dukkha. It allows us to create a bank around it in order to live lives that are noble, in order to try and do the right thing, to try and face the the worst of ourselves, to try and face the worst in others with love, with open— with openness, um, to tend to our own reactions when they come up, because of course they will. I had to wait quite a while before replying to that woman. And to know that the Buddha is there. Somehow there is something wise and compassionate in the universe that loves us, that sees us with all our awfulness and all our gloriousness, and that loves us just as we are. And that's what we return to if we have a spiritual practice, if we're serious about a spiritual practice and we want it to support us and to help us face the things that we need to do, then we come back to practice. We come back to this room, we come back to our shrines at home. And in the Life of No Regrets, it says, no matter the obstacles, the hardships, my practice will endure through all. Without regret. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. So now we will finish with prostrations, which hopefully you will join us from home. And we chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, um, and we bow to the floor. So if your body's able to do that, then just copy me. If not, do whatever you would like to do. And, uh, We do it 3 times for 3 bows.

Namo Amida Buddha! Namo Amida Buddha! Namo Amida Buddha!

Namo Amida—

Amo Amida. Amida. Amo Amida. 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 we still have strength, let us each hear the Dharma. Let us strive and diligently seek the path to eternity.

So if you'd like to return to stand at your seats, we always finish practice by bowing to each other to show our gratitude that we have some people to practice with. So when Philip brings the bell, I will bow to Philip, and you three, I don't know what you're going to do. You'll bow to each other and then turn around and do your— your foot. Never bow too many times. Bow to the Buddha and then bow to your seat and tidy your seat. So, um, we do have events coming up. Um, do check the calendar. You're always welcome to join via Zoom if you did want— ever want to come again. You're welcome. Um, we do have a cup of tea now, although because Casper and I stepped in at late notice, we do have to go and take our dogs to be groomed, so we're not going to be able to stay very long. But you're very welcome to stay for a cup of tea. Um, we do have a donation bowl in the hallway, and also on the Bright Earth website, it's brightearth.org/donate. You can also donate there. Uh, book group— I've got a book group starting online a couple of weeks. It's on the website too. I think that's everything. So I'm going to, um, leave the shrine room, and then I'll come back and say hello to you guys.