Practice: To and from the Pureland

Good morning everybody, welcome to our practice session this morning. Welcome if you're joining us in the shrine room for the first time, or if you've been here many times, or just a couple of times. Welcome to Alex and Philip joining us on Zoom. We're going to begin by, uh, with a Dharma glimpse this morning that was written by Philip, who's here virtually, but Satya is going to read it for us.

Hopefully I'll do it justice, Philip.

Namami Tobu. So Dharma glimpses are just little experiences from our life that we write down, things that teach us something. This is a Dharma glimpse by Philip. I was thinking about location and being before a recent trip to the temple for a mindfulness retreat stay. The idea and knowledge of having a planned trip back to the temple always fills me with warmth. To be reconnected with temple mates, the sangha, a sense of action and purpose through the Earth vigils, and a stronger sense of being connected to the Buddha than where I now live up north. But I still find parts of me unsettled by traveling and change in surroundings. I asked myself before this recent visit, am I able to be anywhere geographically and locationally but connected to both myself and something bigger? The answer at the moment feels like it is a no. I vaguely remembered a saying along the lines of, 'You are exactly where you're supposed to be.' I assumed it meant locationally. I don't know if it also means cosmically, spiritually, and internally. Maybe it can be any or all of those, acknowledging there is overlap between them. The saying sounds comforting to me in terms of cosmically and locationally, that sense of fate and/or being guided by something bigger. But I'm not sure it feels true or perhaps helpful to me. Maybe spiritually and internally being compassionate, it's the best I can be at this moment. Maybe that is a truth of sorts, but it's not where I want to be. Brother Graham, Brian, and I used to recount lines from the poem Desiderata in the temple kitchen. One of our shared favorites is, 'You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here.' Having a right to be here gives me some comfort and compassion, but I think accepting and embracing this might also mean accepting the rights of others to be here— the trees, stars, sentient beings, and others struggling like me, whether consciously or not, with their delusions, ignorance, and reckless actions to the earth and all its inhabitants. For me, I think, I think there might be hard but beautiful work to do to move forward spiritually and internally. Part of that hard work feels like it could be surrendering to and taking refuge in Amida Buddha. The distance to lean in may be small in many ways, but in other ways it feels to me like one of the furthest and most challenging. Maybe it is both simultaneously near and far, but the further I go spiritually, the less distance I have to travel internally to be connected to myself and to something bigger, so that perhaps my physical location becomes much less important. To how I think and feel and what I am able to offer and receive, so that wherever I am physically, or even internally at times, I am nearly always in the right place in relation to the Buddha.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Thank you, Satya. Thank you. So we're moving to a period of quiet sitting together. So finding or settling into an upright but comfortable position, maybe moving a little bit to the left, a little bit to the right, finding your center. Maybe dropping awareness into the body or noticing physical sensations that felt sensations, tuning into the place your body meets the floor or the cushion, how that weight is supported. And then bringing awareness to rest on the breath, not trying to breathe in any particular way, just noticing how it is moment to moment. And wherever your attention wanders greeting that with friendliness. Oh, here's a thought about what I'm doing later. Oh, here I am being distracted by noise in the kitchen. And then returning awareness to the breath. We'll sit in this way for about 15 minutes. So we'll move into a period of chanting.

Together we will recite a mantra that comes from Tibetan tradition that we learned from a friend in Tri Ratna. It's another form of Nembutsu, reciting the name of Amida Buddha. Amida is this Buddha here next to me, also the red one in the thangka next to the mirror. The Buddha of infinite compassion and wisdom. Some people say a symbol for infinite compassion and wisdom. I have the sense that it's more than a symbol, that that compassion and wisdom is out there in the universe somehow and comes towards us as, as we long for it. And one of the ways it comes towards us is in the form of this Buddha. So it, I guess it may be a symbol, but it's a symbol for something real, for me at least anyway. So the words that we'll recite in the mantra are Om Amidaewa Re.

I'll put those in the chat for the people on Zoom.

So we'll do half a mala of recitation and then have a few more minutes of silence together.

Om Mani Devi Wari. Om Mani Devi Wari.

Om Amitewari.

Om Amitewari. Om Amitewari.

Om Ami De Wa Rie.

Om Ami De Wa Rie. Om Ami De Wa Rie.

Omami te wa ri.

Omami te wa ri. Omami te wa ri.

Om Ami Te Wa Rii.

Om Ami Te Wa Rii. Om Ami Te Wa Rii.

Om Ami Deva Re.

Om Ami Deva Re. Om Ami Deva Re.

Omami de wa ri.

Omami de wa ri. Omami de wa ri.

Om Ami Deva Re.

Om Ami Deva Re. Om Ami Deva Re.

Om Ami Deva Re.

Om Ami Deva Re. Om Ami Deva Re.

Om Ami Deva Sri.

Om Ami Deva Sri. Om Ami Deva Sri.

Om Amidevare.

Om Amidevare. Om Amidevare.

Omami dewari.

Omami dewari. Omami dewari.

Omami de wa ri.

Omami de wa ri. Omami de wa ri.

Om Amideva Re.

Om Amideva Re. Om Amideva Re.

Om Ami Deva Sri.

Om Ami Deva Sri. Om Ami Deva Sri.

Om Amideva Reem.

Om Amideva Reem. Om Amideva Reem.

Omami te wa ri.

Omami te wa ri. Omami te wa ri.

Om Ami Deva Hari.

Om Ami Deva Hari. Om Ami Deva Hari.

Thank you, everybody.

We'll now recite the refuges and precepts together. I'll do repeat after me, but if you want to see the words, they are on the sheet of A5. The refuges are the, uh, the three refuges. Are common to all traditions of Buddhism, and they are the things that we put our trust in, or experiment with putting our trust in, or maybe just put one tentative footstep forward to test it out while the other foot is keeping our balance on the things that we know. So we go to refuge to the Buddha, by which we mean Shakyamuni Buddha, who's on the shrine at the front of the man 2,500 years ago, more or less, in India, who started the Buddhist tradition. We have a sense that he had his own teachers and that there's Buddha stretching back before then, but he's the one whose teachings fill up the sutras and suttas. And Buddha means awakened person, so we're also taking refuge in other awakened beings and teachers wherever we find them. We take refuge in the Dharma, which are the words that the Buddha spoke, the teachings, but also the spirit of those words, the eternal truth that we can find anywhere if we pay the right kind of attention. And we take refuge in the Sangha, which is the community of people, particularly the wise elders who have been putting those teachings into practice. So please repeat after me. 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 Dhammaya.

Namo Dhammaya.

For refuge I go to the Sangha.

For refuge I go to the Sangha.

Namo Sanghaya.

Namo Sanghaya.

Now we have the Five Refuges, the Five Precepts that the Buddha said was suitable for lay people that have been passed down through the generations. And any one of these, if practiced completely fully, would lead to a perfectly ethical life. But On the other hand, it's also good to have some guidance. So we say these to sort of give us an indication of the kind of life we hope to lead, and also to connect us to all the other Buddhists around the world who are saying these same words in their own languages. So please repeat after me again. With faith in the Three Jewels, with faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may not take life, I pray that I may not take life— —with faith in The Three Jewels; With Faith In The 3 jewels... ...I Pray That I May Not Steal—I'm afraid if they're gonna steal—with Faith In the three jewels......Faith And Free Jules?...) "With Faith." "...in time it will fall into sexual misconduct..." ..."Not Fall Into Sexual Misconducts?" "...With Faith In The 3 Jews;" "" "Three Jewel." "...That's It!"... I pray that I may not fall into 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.

And now the three lines written by Terry Keenan, a Zen priest who lives in Ireland, that Satya Robyn, that for me just encapsulate the whole of the spiritual path. No blame. No blame. Be kind. Be kind. Love everything. Love everything. And finally, in call and response, so we'll chant these. Kaima will chant the first half and we will repeat. Reply. The bodhisattva vows, the aspiration that we, we, uh, we put off our own complete awakening, we put off disappearing from this world and going into nirvana until all other beings have been awakened. So we're just, um, we're setting an intention to work for the good, for the awakening of all sentient beings, which, as Satya said on Wednesday, is framed in this way that makes it sound like an impossible task. And yet we point ourselves in that direction anyway.

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 Namamidabuddha.

This morning before practice in the shrine room, Satya Robyn and I had a mindful walk around the garden. It was just the two of us this morning and the dogs, and for me at least it wasn't very mindful. I'd really been looking forward to it and anticipating, oh, this will shift me into a kind of peaceful state of mind, a calm state of mind. I'll feel grounded. Maybe I will even feel in my heart some of that interconnectedness with all beings. You know, I know that in my head, and sometimes I have an experience of it, and particularly That tends to happen when I'm outside. And actually, the storm, Storm Eunice, has blown one of our neighbor's fences over. And I thought, how wise is it for the dogs to be in the garden with us? Are they going to try and escape into next door's garden? And they seem to be staying fairly close to us. And they did go over and investigate, but they came back as soon as I called them. I thought, okay, it's fine. We can do this. Mindful walk. And we go around the garden, and I'm noticing in the grooves on the decking there's still some— I don't know if it was frost or little bits of hail that hadn't melted from yesterday. There's some hellebore flowers under the silver weeping pear tree. And we come around the corner, and I see the dogs disappearing into next door's garden. And straight away I'm anxious and stressed out and panicking. And one comes back and the other one, I have to kind of go out of my mindful walking and speed up and call him over. And then the rest of the time I'm sort of hypervigilant. Where are the dogs? Where are the dogs? Where are the dogs? And this is how it is to live life, to have a spiritual life. It's a movement between, between coming to places like this that, that are boundaried and protected and, and allow us to relax enough to do the practice in ways that we can feel connected, or at least point ourselves in the direction of connection with all beings, with the Buddha. And times when we're just in the world and having to deal with what the world does. Enrique and I were talking a bit about the shamanic edge of Buddhism last night, this idea that through the generations teachers have had visions of the Pure Land and maybe even a sense of having visited there in their own lives, or of other realms, or In some traditions, there's— in some of the Tibetan traditions, there's a sense that sort of teachings have been delivered through the Buddha appearing in a vision and saying, I am revealing this to you now because the time is right. So this, this very sort of mystical edge to Buddhism that isn't spoken about much in the West because it's not very rational on the one hand, and on the other hand, when Buddhism first arrived in the West, Christianity was still quite strong and would have looked down upon it as witchcraft. So there's that side to it, and I, and I can really get hooked in, in just wanting to dwell in the Pure Land where everything is really lovely and there's no hell realms and the Buddhist message is there. And really, it's just, it's, it's just a land of loving kindness, a land of harmony. Where you just feel at ease and everybody is in the process of becoming enlightened, and that's happening very quickly, and how lovely. And actually, I also have to be in this world, and what a pain that is sometimes. And yet both are really important. Occasionally I meet people who seem to spend all their time in the Pure Land, and actually that isn't so helpful because there's things to deal with. Here, not just practical things like fences falling down, but also broken hearts and suffering and the huge conflicts that we see in the world, both personal and international, and the climate crisis. So it's really important to tend to this life that we have as well, and to bring that spirit of loving kindness out of these places into our ordinary lives, to bring some of that light back, to, to aim at least to live a compassionate life in this world whilst staying connected and longing for the experience of being held or met or inhabiting the Pure Land.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

So in a moment we'll stand and make prostrations, bows to the main shrine. We chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo while we do this, which is another form of Nembutsu, and As someone said when they came on Wednesday, it can feel a bit culty, but just go with it and then we can talk about it later if it feels strange.

So we'll make 3 prostrations.

In gratitude, we offer this incense to all Buddhas and bodhisattvas throughout space and time. May it be fragrant as Earth herself, reflecting our wholehearted efforts. Oh, hearted awareness, our careful efforts, and the fruit of understanding slowly ripening. May we and all Buddhas be companions of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. May we awaken from forgetfulness and realize the true home. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. It's the one word that caught me.

So we'll bow to each other, to the main shrine.

Let's find our seats, places, bow to our seats. So a couple of announcements. This evening we're hosting a Heading for Extinction talk about the climate crisis and what you can do about it.

You're very welcome to attend.

That's at 7 o'clock.

The donation bowl is in the hallway, which we really appreciate when people put money in because it goes to keeping up the physical building that we're using.

And the first weekend in March, on the Saturday, we've got another mindful retreat day that you're very welcome to join us for as well. So we'll finish today by reciting the closing verse, and then you're very welcome to join us for a cup of tea. Afterwards.

Do unmute if you're on Zoom and want to join us.

Blessed by Amitābha's light, may we care for all living things and the holy land. Namāmītabhū. Thank you, everybody.