Sir Kusuma leads a Buddhist shrine-room practice with guided meditation, chants including Nembutsu, and a dharma talk on finding refuge and Pure Land practice. The service includes prostrations and a dedication of merits to Satya's father Harry and family.
Chapters
Good morning everybody, and for those of you that don't know me, my name is Sir Kusuma and I'll be leading you through this morning's service.
So to begin with, we will start with our Dharma Glimpse, which is from Angie today, and it's read by Dhyarmay.
This is called Sweeping and Breaking. I was walking past the alcoves in the garden where the Buddha and Tara rupas are, and I suddenly had the desire to sweep them. I enjoyed the action of sweeping and the way the dry leaves moved from place to place, sometimes agreeing to follow the broom, sometimes leaping away and landing in my recently swept bit. I like the softness of the dust as it gathered and reminded me of sweeping rooms and shrines in hotter, drier countries than the UK. Then I caught the thin wire of the fairy lights with the broom and it broke and split. I felt stupid, careless, and clumsy, and quickly started to think— started thinking that it could be relatively simple to repair if I could just work out which wires connected to which. Another part of me smiled warmly at the situation. And how I couldn't even perform the simple devotional act of sweeping without messing it up. How endearing, how bonbu. It also seemed to reflect the interplay of self-power and other power. I hadn't generated the urge to sweep the alcoves, that was other-powered from the divine. And in my limited self-powered acting on that idea, I was able to partially sweep the area as I'd been drawn to, and I also destroyed the fairy lights in the process. Another perfect moment of the Dharma expressing itself. Namamidabut.
Going to spend a period of time in meditation, and this morning we're going to do a meditation that's in two parts. So we're going to do a Nei Kwan, Qi Kwan. So in the first part of this meditation, a Nei Kwan It means to call, uh, sift through, sorry, our nature, our inquiring mind. And we sort of call out and sift through what has happened over the last 24 hours or 48 hours. And we come to this place of sifting through and gathering through everything and really just sort of sitting with those moments and Preparing ourselves then for letting go of them. And after our period of nekuang, Dhyana will sound a bell and you will hear the words infinite light, be my delight, shine on the inordinary. And at that point, we're giving everything that we found, all those things that have bothered us across those 48 hours or 24 hours to the Buddha. We're calling out and asking him to take them from us. So in this place of chu kwan, we are hopefully going to find a sense of peace and tranquility and let go of everything that we've found. So we'll begin with ne kwan. We just try to center yourself within the body and the breath. And just start to have your awareness of the breath, breathing in through your nose and out through your nose, and just feeling your feet touching the floor, feeling yourself grounded in that place. And just work with the breath, and even if you find that some of the things that rise are a little unsettling Just return to your breath, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth.
Infinite light, immaidenite, shine on me, anointing Infinite light, infinite light, infinite light. Be my delight, shine on me, and on thee.
Again, using the breath and offering up— sikkha through to the Buddha. We are going to chant Namah Tassa. Namah Tassa. I think you'll find it on your sheets, but the next Satya Robyn. We'll get into a tune and then do join in. So the translation of that is: homage to him, the world-honored one, the one who is worthy of offerings, the one who is rightly and completely awakened. So when we chant this, it's awakening the Buddha within us and being in the presence of the Buddha at our heart. So if you think of it as your heart's practice and an awakening.
Now we move on to our refuges, followed by the precepts. So together we say, for refuge I go to the Buddha, the one who is awake and full of love. Namobuddhaya. 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 Damaya.
Namo Damaya.
For refuge I go to the Sangha.
For refuge I go to the Sangha.
All who live in the Buddha's light.
All who live in the Buddha's light.
Namo Sanghaya.
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 temptation! Into sexual misconduct.' 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 not fall into wrong speech. —I pray that I might not fall to one's feet—with faith in the Three Jewels—With faith in the 3 Jews—I pray that I may avoid intoxication.
I pray that I may avoid intoxication.
No blame. No blame. Be kind. Be kind. 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 vow to master them all.
Infinite is the Buddha's way.
We vow to fulfill it completely.
So we move on to my dharma talk, and apologies for the fact that I have to have notes, but as someone with ADHD, if I didn't have the notes, you'd still be sat here in about another 3 hours because I would have gone off at a massive tangent. So bear with me. So across the week I was thinking about what I would talk about today, what would be this pearl that would come into the air as I went about my week. And all week I came across my thinking about where do we find refuge, where are the places that we find refuge. You know, in my life it's my garden, or in my mala making. We all have these things, whether they be people or places that we go to for refuge. And when we're in the shrine room, um, our refuges are the Buddha and the Dharma and the Sangha, the togetherness of us when we all come together. And, uh, these are all wholesome choices, um, because they focus our mind on what's important beyond ourselves. So when we practice the Nembutsu, um, we're thinking of the Buddha, and in doing so, we can connect to the Pure Land as Pure Land Buddhists. And, uh, I sort of think of the Nembutsu And that practice is connecting us to this home, um, that we've never been to with our physical body. Um, but with our breath, when we chant or when we meditate, we might get a sense of this other place. If we're lucky, we may have this little moment, whether it be, you know, even here just now, just looking out the window, you might get a sense of something beyond where we are.. And, um, I really like this idea of comparing it to, um, when you're a child, you have a— may be lucky enough to have a parent who says, can you remember the address? Can you remember our phone number if you get lost? This is where you live. And, uh, I think it's— the Nembutsu feels like that. It's this address that we have ready for us that kind of becomes part of us, so that when the time comes and we move on from this life to the Pure Land, we have this address ready, uh, to go there. And, uh, you know, you could say the Nembutsu becomes part of your DNA. Um, you know, we already know our way home if we come and practice in this room, or if we practice at home, or saying Nembutsu in the car, it's there, it's already starting to become part of us, and, uh, we know our way home. And, you know, when the— when we do start to become ill and when we eventually start to pass from this life to the next, um, you know, we'll already be prepared. The Nembutsu will already be with us. And when the time comes where we're perhaps unconscious and we can't say it for ourselves anymore, we'll We only have to hear somebody say it for us, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, and that's our, that's our moment, that's our key that unlocks the door, and we get to go into our new home. Um, but of course, outside of the shrine room, uh, you know, we have all sorts of things that we take refuge in. And as life goes on and as we get older, we realize some of those things that we take refuge in are good, and some of them are not so good. And we have all probably had, um, you know, those extremes of experiences outside. And, um, if we're, if we're lucky enough, we awaken to the realization that those things belong to this earthly world. You know, we can't take those outside refuges with us. Um, you know, even if we love those things intensely, um, whether they be people or objects They will never, uh, go with us. They are part of, of this world here. And there are lots of Dharma teachings that warn us of this and say, well, you know, um, we, we shouldn't really take refuge in these objects. And, and even in our own religion, and if you practice your Buddhism as a religion, you know, we can't even take refuge completely in the, the Dharma. It's about, um, the Nembutsu, and it's about the Buddha and our connection ultimately with them. And, uh, you know, Amida Buddha is infinite, the Buddha of infinite light, and that's all we can depend on. That is the only object that we can depend on that will move through this world, uh, you know, with us unknowingly, really understanding how we connect with it. Sometimes it's a— sometimes it feels quite a magical, um, transformation that can happen around us without our really understanding. Um, and I, I often think back to the refuges that I encountered when I was a chaplain working in a hospice in palliative care. And I think now about, um, the people that I sat with who weren't necessarily Buddhist, but I would sit with them, and my encounters were often about their own refuges, the things that had been important throughout their whole lives. And hobbies was often one, you know, some people would have some real passions that they, you know, wanted to tell me about. And I remember sitting with a really frail elderly man who wanted to tell me all about his bicycle and cycling because it had been his passion his whole life, you know, from the first time he got on a bike when he was about 4 or 5. To right through to his 70s. And he had a very particular bike, the name of which I can't remember, but it was, it was like as old as the hills. It was such an old model of bike and he loved this bike. And, um, the whole session with him was all about the bike. And he leaned over to me and really quietly said, I love my bike more than my wife, but don't tell her. Don't tell her. And wow. —what a strong object of refuge, you know. He— every moment he got, he was on this bike. So that was, you know, and I felt like, um, he needed to tell me this experience. He needed to let go of this object, this place of refuge for him at that time before he passed. And, you know, and he actually passed away not long after that. And, um, yeah, I, I think that, uh when we sit with people in such a way, there's a level of transference. So they transfer that information to me because as I sit there, I'm sitting there as a disciple of the Buddha, and there's some sort of energetic shift that maybe perhaps they get a glimpse of the Buddha and then off they go, you know. And, um, Yeah, so in the end, the objects and the people that we seek refuge in can't really offer us the peace. They just bring us agitation. We all know that. We all know how much refuges have caused us trouble in our lives. Um, you know, and at the end, we have to find a way to let go. So when we sit here in this space, in our shrine room, or the space we make at home, and we take our refuges. Um, it's a really precious space to be in, you know. We can find strength from sitting here, and, uh, there's this energy, you know. We call out in lots of different ways, and already today, you know, if it's your first time, you've experienced the different chants already that we do, and there's you know, another one to come in a minute. And, um, you know, we take our— when we take our refuges, uh, we have to feel them wholeheartedly and know that, um, when we call out the Nembutsu, that's, uh, the key that opens that door for us all one day, and that the Buddha is It's always there, always listening, and always there for us. And, um, you know, that's our heart's practice. That's, that's the really true nature of who we are as Pure Land Buddhists. And it took me a long time, you know, and countless conversations with people far more experienced than me saying, it's just the Nembutsu, just Nembutsu. Don't worry about anything else. Um, you know, and as a neurodiverse person who struggles to hold a sentence in my head sometimes, it's a huge relief that I just have to worry about Nembutsu, and that's it. And when the time comes, then, um, I'll, I'll know. I'll see the Buddha and I'll, I'll know.
So, um, Yeah, where was I going to go now with that?
Yeah, so, um, yeah, so what I wanted to say was to try and, um, when you come out of the shrine room and you go into everyday life, um, think of ways to find opportunities to, to say the Nembutsu, whether it be driving in the car or in the shower or whatever it may be. And just sense a feel of those, sense of the anxiety just sort of letting go and feeling that love and that joy be present. It can be hard sometimes to take the feeling that you get in the shrine room away with you, but really know that when you leave, you carry the Nambutsu and you carry the Buddha with you.
Yeah, namamuddepi.
Yeah, we're going to stand for prostrations.
She says, oh, my bad ankle. So just to conclude the practice today, we are transferring the merits of everything that we've done And in particular today, we're going to dedicate our practice to Satya's father Harry and to, uh, her family. Difficult time. By your power and through your grace, I bow down And bow to each other. Yep. Bows. Bows.
Sorry, bows. I didn't want to say that.
I'm sorry. And bow to the Buddha. And to our seats. And then we finish with our closing verse. Blessed by Amitabha's light, may we care for all living things and all beings. Namamitubendze. Thank you everyone.
Thank you. Lovely.
Stop the recording.
Yes, I will, if I can find the stop button. Oh, it's crashed. Oh no, we're okay, I think. I don't know if we have
