Satya Robyn leads a Dharma meditation session with William Stafford's poem, guided meditation, chanting, and a talk on impermanence and spiritual practice. Dogs are audible throughout the Zoom session from her office.
Chapters
Good morning, everybody. I'm in Satya's office. The dogs are here making noise in the background. Satya and I have just separated from the household for this week before we go and see Satya's parents at the end of the week. We just want to be extra careful at the moment. So the Zoom service, we did some outside practice with people, that was really nice, but the Zoom practice is coming from Satya's office today. As you know, if you've been here the last couple of weeks, we're beginning practice with a Dharma glimpse. And, um, you can do today's. You'll need to come close to the microphone.
I've got two dogs on me. Can you hear me, guys?
So Satya's going to read the Dharma. Maybe I won't upload this later. So I'll just say for Tony, a Dharma glimpse usually is something that somebody has written, either someone who's going to practice, or we've got a book that's been written by other people, just an experience from from their lives that they then pull some dharma out of. But today I'm mixing it up, so the Dharma Glimpse is written by William Stafford, who's a very good poet.
You reading this, be ready. Starting here, what do you want to remember? How sunlight creeps along a shining floor. What scent of old wood hovers. What softened sound from outside fills the air. Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now? Are you waiting for time to show you some better thoughts? When you turn around, starting here, Lift this new glimpse that you found. Carry into evening all that you want from this day. This interval you spent reading or hearing this, keep it for life. What can anyone give you greater than now, starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Satya Robyn, nice reading about dwelling in the present moment and not grasping after something that isn't already here. We'll go into a period of meditation now, so just finding your meditation posture, that upright, comfortable position. And if you like, wondering where the Buddha is in this moment. How do you experience the Buddha right now? It might be feeling the solidity of the earth. Oh yeah, I'm supported in that way. It might be that an image of a particular Buddha comes to mind, or that there's some place in your body or mind somewhere that feels a little bit more peaceful than all the rest. So if you want an invitation to notice how the Buddha is showing up for you as we sit quietly together.
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. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha.
Ameeka ba. Please repeat. For refuge I go to the Buddha.
For refuge I go to the Buddha.
Namo Buddhaya.
Namo Buddaya.
For refuge I go to the Dharma.
For refuge I go to the Dharma.
Namo Dharmaya.
Namaste.
For refuge I go to the Sangha.
For refuge I go to the sangha.
Namo Sanghaya. With faith in three jewels—
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—
The faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may not steal. I pray that I may not steal.
With faith in the Three Jewels With faith in this Three Jewels— I pray that time may not fall into sexual misconduct! With Faith In The 3 jewels? "I Pray That Time May Not Fall Into Wrong Speech!" —that's right... 'That' means to avoid it; we don't do something again because of our mistakes or bad choices before us now when you're doing your practice today okay so say these lines together please.
So let me repeat them for all three people who have joined on tonight if they can follow along at home too thank You very much dear friends here comes number one from Therese Hsu—"New Year" good fortune happy new year hello everyone my name is Teresse Hu Suu Muin how about yours?" Okay great thanks Terry love hearing those beautiful greetings there then just go through each line by word once more shall we start off saying Number One first 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 follow it completely.
I've already got my holiday head on, so I have just forget— forgetting to do things like make sure I've got bells for the practice session this morning. Once, many years ago, I was at Hungry Ghosts ceremony led by a friend of mine at the time, and we hadn't got any bells, so we used children's toys and musical instruments to mark the points through the ceremony. Which was very sweet. This morning, Satya Robyn singing Changes by David Bowie, just been stuck in my head, particularly those two lines, I can't change time, but time can change me. I don't know if I'm quoting that exactly right, but that's what's stuck in my head. And of course, some Buddhists believe that time doesn't exist, or at least doesn't exist in the way that we think it does. What do they mean by that? They mean that it isn't a discrete set of immutable events that happen one after the other and then disappear completely. If you imagine an orchestra playing a song at any given moment, if you could freeze time, some notes would be falling away, some would just being struck or blown or bowed, plucked. Many of the instruments would be silent, which probably means vibrating very quietly, maybe just a little bit of resonance from the other strings. And nothing is lost in that. None of the pieces disappear as the time moves forward. Other things rise and fall. Some things get louder and some things get quieter, but nothing is lost. None of the instruments disappear. Even the quiet ones are adding something of their presence. So when I think of time in this way, it's the sense of movement and fluidity and everything always shifting and changing and dancing, and nothing is ever completely still. It's the science of thermodynamics, I suppose. Nothing is— no energy is ever lost in the universe, it just changes into other forms. So coming to terms with things rising and falling, of course, appearing and disappearing, or changing from one thing into another more accurately, is a big part of Buddhist practice. It's what— when we say impermanence, what we really mean is things changing their form. And the clinging on to, oh, this form, I like the chocolate in this form, the form it is before I've eaten it. I don't like it when it's disappeared from this form and isn't available to be eaten anymore. It's still around, of course. It's just different. So we cling on to wanting to keep things as they are, wanting to freeze time. And there's another important aspect of time in Buddhism which isn't spoken about so much, but it's this idea that It's very easy to see, and classical Buddhism speaks about this very clearly, that the things we do now condition the future. And that's of course really important. The choices we make about how to behave in this moment, how defensive to be, how reactive to be, the ripples of that move forward through time. They change the things around us in a particular way, adding more negative karma or positive karma or enlightened energy into the universe depending on how we are moment to moment. It's one of the, um, one of the motivations for spiritual practice. If I can take care of myself in this moment which, as William Stafford was hinting, is the only moment I've got to take care of myself in, then I'm more likely to be able to take care of myself and others in future moments because I'm not adding in more of that negative energy. So this container of the present, which is the only container, and creates the future. We're creating the future both in terms of what we put into the world and how the things around change us, but also in terms of our own state of mind, the window that we're looking through each moment in. The more we change our inner state, even if nothing around us changed, that would also be changing the future. And the less obvious part of this— Thich Nhat Hanh talks about it a little bit in one of his books, I think— is that we can— is that the present moment also conditions the past. And what do I mean by that? There's a couple of ways that happens. And the most important, I suppose, from a Buddhist point of view, is that when we deal with our wounds from the past, when we deal with them in the present moment, when we bring compassionate and loving kindness to the traces of those that are left in our system, to the hurt and the pain, and also the anger and the reactiveness and defensiveness, or the blanking out. As we're able to soften those and let them go in the present moment, it changes our experience of the past. If I'm still carrying a lot of pain about something, when I look back on that time it's going to be colored in a particular way, in a hot way or a fiery way. Or maybe I just will blank it out and skip over that when I'm telling my story or remembering things. But in this moment that I'm existing in, if I can do that spiritual practice, if I can take care of it in a particular way, and then when I look back into the past the felt sense of that memory is very different. I can have compassion for all of the people involved, myself, the other people around me, the circumstances. It's cooler, it's more spacious. And of course, in some ways it doesn't change practically what happened. It doesn't change where all the pieces were. On the board, but it is a very significant change. It is a very important way that the present conditions the past. And there's something else that happens when, when that change occurs, when we can heal those things, when we can see those incidents in the past through enlightened eyes. We're offering the opportunity for the other people involved in that to also step into a different space, into a calmer space, a more enlightened space. Even if we're not speaking to them or in touch anymore, I really trust that the work we do, the threads of the connections that remain between us or that were true in the past, the healing travels along those and creates a different set of conditions. And I see this play out sometimes in my own life where, um, in client work or friendships or working with volunteers, when I'm able to move into a calmer and more compassionate space and let go of anything that's been triggered for me, That is the moment the other person reaches out to see how I'm doing, because somehow in our shared process, like two subatomic particles that have become entangled, when something changes in my system, something changes in their system. And maybe it's me that reaches out, maybe It's them that reaches out. Maybe there's more prosaic ways of explaining that, but I really trust that the, the work we do on our own pasts, the spiritual healing we, we bring to our own pasts, isn't just for ourselves. It's for all of the beings, the living beings that were involved in that at the time. So I, I really do trust that how we respond in this moment, we're creating the next moment, but we are also conditioning what has happened in the past as well. We're creating— it's like spiritual freedom can travel forwards and backwards in time. Anyway, something to mull over perhaps the next time you listen to David Bowie singing. So we're going to do some prostrations now. I will— you— well, I guess I could move the camera. I mean, you don't need to see me doing them. I'm going to do them in front of a little shrine here on the right. Feel free to either join in and do them from standing, or just to bow, or just join in with the chanting. Maybe I'll see if I can point the camera at the Buddha. There we are. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.
Ama Amida. Ama Amida Bu. Ama Amida Bu. Ama Amida Bu.
Just open it, make the camera— the camera is pointing up.
So we're back to each other, namaste. We'll finish with the closing verse. Blessed by Amitābha's light, may we care for all living things and the holy earth. Om Mani Padme Hum.
