Satya Robyn leads a guided Buddhist service with talk on power structures in Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism, female ordination, and meditation posture. Extended chanting of Amitabha follows, with closing logistics for a garden walking meditation.
Chapters
Namaste. Good morning everybody, welcome to Saturday morning service. That's my podcast voice. Hi, welcome to Claire and Becky on Zoom and Dave, Philip, Jahameh, and Satya in the room. I've been thinking a lot about power recently and power structures, and the Buddhism that flourished in Tibet and Japan— they're probably the best-known forms of Buddhism in the UK because of receiving Japanese and Tibetan teachers into Europe. And in the States as well. They both flourished during feudal societies. Buddhism really flourished in medieval Japan, and similarly in Tibet, they have a very strong feudal system that really is only beginning to change with the influx of the Han Chinese from the rest of China. And for all the wisdom and compassion of Buddhism, something of the power structures of those feudal times simply got transferred across into the monasteries and traditions. So powerful men who had been politically powerful or martially powerful. You see the same kind of character in some of the abbots and religious leaders in the monasteries and communities in those places, and the same power structures developing one person at the top holding all the power, and then this kind of triangle of people underneath. This of course wasn't true across the board, and there's a noble tradition of appearing in monasteries and not telling anybody what your name or rank is, and just kind of sleeping in the visitors hall, and slowly people beginning to respect you, and eventually it comes out that you're a master from a distant province. And in the pre-social media days, where nobody knew what anyone looked like, that was possible. But mostly these power structures remained intact. And it can be quite hard if you're near the top of these power structures to imagine what life is like for the people near the bottom of these power structures or outside of the system, outside of the privilege of the system. You know, in Japan there's a tradition that the disciple watches the teacher and doesn't really have any instruction from the teacher, but learns to anticipate their needs and meet their needs almost before the teacher knows what they are. So this pot of tea appearing just on the desk at the right time, this document appearing that needs to be signed. In many ways, life becomes very stress-free when in some of those positions, because here's the structure of your day. The people around you know exactly where you need to be and what you need to do, and all you do is kind of roll through it, blessing people and making teachings. If that kind of structured life suits you, it can be fairly easy. Obviously there's— there can be other hardships, but if you're living in that position, it can be very hard to spot that your needs are being met, because a lot of the rhetoric of Buddhism is about letting go of ego. So you can do all these intense practices of letting go of selfishness, but at the same time all your needs are being met, and one perhaps undermining the other. And then when marginalized groups begin to find a voice, for example, nuns in Tibet beginning to ask for equal ordination to monks, that can feel very threatening because suddenly the power that you've gathered without really noticing it is threatened. And you see, when you look at Tibet, there's a mixture of responses to the issue of nuns receiving equal ordination. Some male teachers being very supportive, and some saying, well, tradition says you must have this number of fully ordained women in order to ordain other women, and we don't have that number of women fully ordained anymore because the tradition's died out, so we can't resurrect it. And this idea in the whole culture of them being second-class citizens, so Monasteries receive many, many more offerings than nunneries do. Tenzin Palmo famous his campaigns in the West to get funds and supplies so that these women in Tibet can receive the same kind of support that the men do. So there's a real invitation for deep reflection in this kind of circumstance, which can be particularly difficult if you've had all your needs implicitly met without really noticing it. How can I genuinely make space for the other? How can I support marginalized voices? How can I— how can those ancient traditions in Tibet make space for the women to be monastics, to be revered as much as the male monastics? Often in these cases, people look to the example of the Buddha, and what we find with the Buddha is that some of these similar power structures are at work. The Buddha was enlightened and wise and wonderfully loving, but also a figure of his time and embedded in the culture and power structures of that time, and had to be convinced to ordain women at all by another member of the community. Initially refused to have any women joining the monastic community. And part of that, part of that insistence on the teacher-disciple model from the Buddha was this understanding that he was transmitting something that was special and unique, and that he had understood more than the other teachers of that time. In one of the suttas, the Buddha says something like I can see all the leaves in the forest and all the trees, but I'm only speaking about one leaf because that's all you guys will be able to understand. And if we take that as more or less true, allowing for a little bit of, uh, you know, bigging yourself up We see this creative tension. On the one hand, there are individuals who through their practice and experience have received something unique and special, some insight or awakening, and it's important to make space for those voices and to revere those voices. Because we come together to learn something that we don't already know. So we, we follow the paths that wiser people than us have laid out for us. And on the other side, understanding that those wise enlightened beings are still enlightened in the context of being in this world and will have things in their shadow that they have missed. And sometimes the wisdom that can see that is the wisdom of people outside of the honored voices. The people at the bottom of the power structures can sometimes see things very clearly that the people at the top have missed. So as Buddhist communities moving into, you know, it's the new year, so thinking about the future for Buddhist communities, this is the challenge that we're presented with, how to continue including and respecting the insight that the people, you know, the view from the top of the mountain, it's really precious, how to keep including that whilst also making space for and including and honoring the view from the bottom of the mountain. Both of these things are important. Namaste. Speaking of mountains, meditation posture is sometimes in Japan described as mountain posture, and this doesn't mean that you should make yourself really rigid like a rock, but more that you sit still. And whatever is happening in the world around you, whatever the weather on the mountaintop is, and whatever the inside weather is, that we just find a way of being still in the center of that. And sometimes that just means waiting and watching. So the invitation for this quiet sitting is simply that, to sit still and quiet and wait and watch, observing your inner weather and the outer weather, and finding a place to rest in that.
Amitabh, Amitabh, Amitabh. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amit. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabha. Amitabha.
Amitabha.
Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Ameen. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha.
We'll now recite the refuges and precepts together, which you can find on your piece of paper, or if you're in Zoom, the link is now in the chat box. We'll have 3 bells at the end of the Bodhisattva vows. I take refuge in the Buddha, the one who shows me the way in this life. I take refuge in the Dharma, the way of understanding and love. Namo Dhammaya. I take refuge in the Sangha, the community that lives in harmony and awareness. Namo Sanghae! With faith in The Three Jewels I pray that may not take life; Nam-myoho-renge-kyo—With Faith In The 3 jewels I prayer this on May Not Steal; With Fate And It's Rejoiced On My Prayer That Some Maybe Fall Into Sexual Misconduct; With Faith Is A Tree Jules I Pray This One Might Now Falling To Wrong Speech? With faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may avoid intoxication.
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.
Infinity is the Buddha's way.
We vow to fulfill it completely. Amo Amida. Amo Amida. Amo Amida. Amo Amida. Namoh Amida Butsu. Namoh Amida. Namoh Amida. Namoh Amida.
Namaste, boo. Thanks everyone for joining us. So If you're in person, you're very welcome to join us in the garden for some quiet walking meditation. It is very muddy in the garden, so— and I fell over in the garden yesterday because my foot slipped from under me, so do be mindful of that if you're going to come down with us. Thank you for joining us on Zoom if you have done, and because we're going into the garden, we haven't got time for a chat today, I'm afraid. We need to finish promptly, but Lovely to see you all.
