A Buddhist shrine-room practice led by two facilitators with participants in-person and on Zoom. The session includes a teaching on impermanence, guided meditation, chanting Amitabha, recitation of the Three Refuges and Five Precepts, Bodhisattva vows, and prostrations.
Chapters
Welcome everybody. Welcome to people in the room and to everybody joining us online. We've got Brian, Priti, Ash, Satya, and myself here in the shrine room this evening, and on Zoom we're joined by Chris, Becky, and Bruce. Hi Bruce, nice to see you. Satya's leading the service practice this evening.
Namaste. So welcome, a special welcome to Bruce and Ash who you haven't— well, Ash came on Zoom last week, but Bruce hasn't been before in this configuration. And so tonight is the first night that we're open to the public here in the shrine room, and so I'm really glad you're here, Ash, because everybody else here lives here, apart from Fi, who's been our one household. Sophie's been around for a little while, and as I thought, people will come back gradually as they feel braver. But it's really— it feels really lovely to have this space open again for people to come and be with us. That's the whole point of this room, and particularly appreciating the flowers on the shrine tonight. —some gorgeous roses. Make sure at the end of practice you go and smell those pale pink roses, they're pretty good. So as I was waiting to come in this evening, I was looking at the bits of glass on the windows in the dining room, and there are two. There's one that's a picture of Kuan Yin, and there's a piece of blue, dark really deep dark blue glass, and the picture of Kuan Yin was painted, and when we moved in the colours were very vivid and bright, and now it is very pale, sun-bleached, and the dark blue glass, the colour, the pigments inside the glass, and so it's just the same colour that it was when we moved in, and it made me think about impermanence, that here we are in the shrine room again after a surprise year and a half, we never really know what's going to happen, things are always changing, and the temptation that I had was to think, oh, the picture of Quan Yin is the impermanent one, and then the blue glass is the thing that's the same, it's always going to be the same. And then I remembered that the blue glass could smash any moment, hopefully it won't fall on anyone, it's been there for 7 years so it should be safe, but who knows, a bird could fly at the window and knock it off from the outside, or it will remain in one piece and eventually it will degrade, even if we have to wait a couple of million years or something. So Buddhism says that everything is impermanent, even mountains, even the earth. And then the idea is that, that once we get a taste of this impermanence, once we come into relationship with the reality of it, it points us towards something, and it points us towards something that does persist, something that does remain constant. And that's the Buddha. So we have a new Buddha rupa on our shrine. He's just been there 2 weeks now. Hopefully he'll be there for a long time to come. But what he represents, what this particular statue represents, is something timeless, something that goes way back before Shakyamuni Buddha, who lived in India 2,500 years ago. Something that is eternal, infinite, endless. So when we practice Buddhism, we're bringing our impermanent selves with our bodies that let us down and get ill and get older. With something that we can lean on and trust— the embodiment of love, the embodiment of wisdom. And that in this relationship, we can, we can relax around impermanence. We can hold it a bit less tightly and trust that things will come and go but we'll be okay, that we will come and go and that somehow we will be okay. So as we sit quietly, not so quietly as usual because we've got the door open for the breeze to go through, so we've got some car sounds to accompany us on our meditation. As we sit quietly, maybe just let your attention follow your breath in and out. Our breath is always showing us impermanence. It's never the same, quite the same breath twice, and that it's always in motion. Just bring your attention to your breath. You don't have to change it, just notice. Sometimes there'll be longer breaths, sometimes shorter breaths. And when your attention wanders off to something else, just bring it back, bring it back gently. After a while of sitting quietly, I'll start chanting Amitabha, and do join in. When you get the tune, namo mi dabim.
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. Aba, ami taba, ami taba, ami taba.
Now recite the three refuges together. Refuge is where we go for safety, and we take refuge in the three jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, rather than in impermanent things. For refuge I go to the Buddha. For refuge I go to the Buddha. Namo Buddhaia. Namo Buddhaia. For refuge I go to the Dharma.
For refuge I go to the Dharma.
Namo Dharmaya. Namo Dharmaya. For refuge I go to the Sangha.
For refuge I go to the Sangha. Namo Sanghaya. Namo Sanghaya.
And then we recite the precepts, which are the 5 vows that we make to try and minimize the harm we do. With faith of three jewels— I pray that may not take life; With faith , it's how we make our vows to Buddha here at Bodhinyana Temple today! —I pray but they're made up steal?
"May you never kill." May he do no killing... I prayed so many times still 'may' now steel?!
...with faith in 3 Jewels—I prayer for Buddhists all over world—"pray" means always say your prayers again on top of them once more—in this Three Jewel Way—with faithful jewel...
Pray—that might fall onto sexual misconduct or adultery I pray that I may not fall into sexual misconduct.
With faith in the Three Jewels, with faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may avoid wrong speech.
I pray that I may avoid 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.
And now Phoebe will lead us in the Bodhisattva vows, which are, articulate our ambition to save all living things.
Innumerable are sentient beings, we vow to save them all. Inexhaustible are diluted 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 follow it completely.
In a minute we'll stand up and do prostrations to the Buddha. I'll go to the front, but everybody else just stay where you are and point towards the Buddha. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. And we bow to each other. So we bow to the people on Zoom, and we bow to the Buddha. And then we turn and bow to our seats and tidy our seats if they have become at all messy. I'll bow to them, not tidy them. And then if you're on Zoom, if you are able to unmute, we'll recite the closing verse together. We need to print these out, so I'm afraid you won't have it in front of you today. We must do that. Everything else, yeah. Blessed by Ami Tarko's words, may we care for all living things Namaste. Hi, Chris. Great. So we're now— hey, tea, if you want a cup of tea, or you can go home, or if you are home already.
