Satya Robyn leads a guided Buddhist practice session with multiple speakers covering Nembutsu chanting, seated meditation, refuges, precepts, and vows. The dharma talk explores conditioning, the placebo effect, and how embodied ritual shapes the heart-mind.
Chapters
Welcome everybody in person, online.
We're going to begin by, uh, as we did last week, reciting the Statement of Faith together. For those people joining online, I'll put a link in the chat if you want to read with us, but feel free just to listen. Either is fine.
The purpose of our practice is to open us to the wisdom and compassion of the Buddhas. Our heart practice is the Nembutsu. The recitation of Amida Buddha's name. We also connect with the Buddha's wisdom through practices like listening to teachings, meditation, and being in the natural world. We treasure Shakyamuni Buddha, who set the wheel of Dharma turning. We learn from Buddhist teachers throughout the ages, awakened beings everywhere. And the world itself. We especially revere the great Pure Land sages Honen and Shinran. Held in Amida's loving gaze, we come to know ourselves deeply, both our bambu nature and our Buddha nature. As bambu beings, we grasp at unreliable refuges, and sometimes we cause harm. Knowing the harm we cause offers us the chance to lessen that harm. Seeing our fallible nature also strengthens our refuge in Amida Buddha. The more deeply we take refuge in Amida, the more our greed, ill will, and delusion will melt like ice into water, allowing our natural compassion to flow into the world. We trust that at the center of each of us is the heart that loves all living beings and that wishes for their liberation. We take action powered by this love in response to suffering in the world. We pay attention to the causes of suffering. We mitigate the power. We practice discerning what work is ours to do. We wish that all who may benefit are able to access the jewels of the Buddha's teachings. Moved by the Buddha's love, we vow to take care of all living beings, including ourselves. Held tenderly by the Buddha's love, we find clarity, consolation, and settled faith.
Moving into meditation for a few minutes.
We'll sit for about 10 minutes. We'll chant Embutsu using the words Om Amidevare.
Om Amidevare. Om Amidevare. Omami te wa bri. Omami te wa bri. Omami te wa bri. Omami Ewa Bree. Omami Ewa Bree. Omami Ewa Bree.
Omami te wa ri.
Omami te wa ri. Omami te wa ri.
Oh, ma mi te wa ri.
Oh, ma mi te wa ri. Omami te wa ri. Omami te wa ri. Omami te wa ri. Om Mani Devi Wari. Om Mani Devi Wari. Om Mani Devi Wari. Omami te wa ri. Omami te wa ri. Omami te wa ri.
The moment we'll recite the refuges and precepts and bodhisattva vows, and again, I'll put a link to those words in the chat. But I will ask you to repeat after me. So you don't necessarily need to see the words, although the Bodhisattva vows are in call and response, so you may want to look at the words for those. But for now, 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. Namo Buddha. For refuge I go to the Dharma, all that guides us to wisdom and compassion. Namo Jama. For refuge I go to the Sangha, those who live in the Buddha's light. Namo Sangha. For refuge I go to the Earth, the holy ground of awakening.
Namo Bhumya.
Amen.
With faith in the Four Refuges, and in light of my human tendencies, I pray that I may become aware of when I take life. I pray that I may become aware of when I take what is not freely given. I pray that I may become aware of when I fall into sexual misconduct. I pray that I may become aware of when I fall into wrong speech.
I pray that I may become aware of when I become intoxicated.
No blame. Be kind. Love everything. Sorry.
We vow to save them all. We vow to transform them all. We have to master the ball. We have to fulfill it completely.
Thank you, Patti.
I think the antihistamine I took this morning is just suddenly worn off. Recently, Satya Robyn, I've been reading about the power of the mind in physical health and healing, not just how, uh, like a positive attitude helps, although there are lots of studies that show patients who believe they're going to recover recover more than patients who believe they're not going to recover, even though their conditions are the same, but how the subconscious beliefs we have about all of that stuff, about ourselves, about the world, how powerful they are. You can't just say, oh, I'm going to have a positive attitude today, if some deeper part thinks that isn't true. And it reminded me, um, Years ago, I read quite a bit of stuff about placebo, the placebo effect, and two studies I still remember reading about. One was showing the difference between if you take like, uh, a painkiller like a paracetamol in one of those white boxes that you get from the pharmacy that just have a printed label on it, but versus exactly the same, probably talked about this before, same painkiller, same dosage, same ingredients in like a box, a red and yellow box with a zigzag on that says, you know, extreme pain relief, and how much more powerful the box, the tablet in the fancy packaging is. And that's probably true for all sorts of stuff, right? Like, Maybe the difference between the best brand at the supermarket and the cheapest supermarket's own brand is more about the fancy packaging and how we project our experience of what the food is going to be like than the difference in ingredients. I'm sure there is some difference. Or whether I anticipate that you'll be listening or not, right? Based on no evidence, I, if I decide that already on some level, it makes a difference to how I speak, probably makes a difference to how you listen. It's all very subtle. But the other study I remember reading about was even if you know about all of these effects and then you enter the study, You can't, like, consciously think your way out of it. You still have a better experience of, for example, the painkiller in the fancy packaging, even if you know it's exactly the same. And in some ways, that's a little bit of a scary thought, right? Because it shows how easily conditioned we are. And we know big companies spend a lot of money working out how to condition us, to channel us into into getting their product rather than somebody else's. Buddhist practice is also a form of conditioning because, um, obviously, like, we read texts like the one we read this evening We can think about it with our conscious mind and maybe think, oh yes, I agree with that, I like the sound of that. But there's lots of ways that Buddhist practice has developed to affect our unconscious beliefs as well. Making prostrations, making offerings at the shrine, doing things with our body gives us a more direct route into the subconscious part of our mind, of our hearts, heart-minds. It's why body therapy is so powerful for some trauma therapy. Chanting, using our voice, has the same kind of effect. It's like opens— when we really let go into the music, like it opens a direct connection to our heart, to our subconscious mind. The way we move around the shrine room, the way we sit in meditation, all of this kind of embodied ritual is a way of conditioning ourselves to, to notice the Buddha's light. To trust that it's there. Of course, we can just take a leap of faith and say, I'm going to behave as if it's true that the Buddha is really there, that the Buddha's presence is a real thing that I can mean into. But that may not be your whole system that's taking the leap of faith. It may just be a part of you that really wants things to change. So the advantage of coming to practice is it speaks to our whole system, or to more of our system. It exposes more of us to the light of the Buddha. Some of you will know the name for the Buddha's robes in Pali, kesa. It means stained, klesha, I think, in Sanskrit. I like— and you can hear the echoes of that word in waggesa, which means small robe. So it's stained, and the original robes were stained. They were rags that were taken from the charnel ground, from the cremation grounds, and dyed a different color. They were stained saffron. And mostly when the Buddha talks about stains, he's talking about something negative that you want to purify. But in this case, I think the staining is a positive thing. It marks people as a member of the community. Like you're dipping the clothes in the dye and they take on more of that color. In the same way, when we come into the shrine room and engage in practice together, we're dipping ourselves in the light of the Buddha and taking on more of that every time we perform these rituals together. And like everyone here comes really often, but, uh, that's the talk I was thinking about giving tonight. It's maybe it's still nice to be reminded of these things. So we're going to stand and make prostrations. We'll bow 3 times and come onto the ground. If you're on Zoom, feel free to bow 3 times to the Buddha on the camera or to a Buddha at home. And as we bow, we'll recite Namo Amida Butsu, which is the, to the same melody that's in the 30 Days of Nembutsu.
May this offering to all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas throughout space and time may be fragrant Forgot this on Saturday, but we'll finish with the closing verse.
Blessed by Amitābha's light, may we care for all living things and love the Earth.
Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. So we'll have a formal exit from the shrine room, and then if you stay online, I'll come and say hello. After everyone's left, I'm gonna do it.
