Saturday morning practice

Alright, good morning everybody. I like to wait for the bell to just start to fade out. Good morning, and for those of you that don't know me, I'm Kusuma, and I'll be leading you through this morning's practice. And this morning we start with a Dharma glimpse as usual, and Katie's kindly going to read a Dharma glimpse for us by Helen.

'Held and Free' by Helen Dakers. Over the last month or so, I've been feeling a little sad. This is nothing new for me and isn't necessarily a product of my specific event or action, although it's fair to say a few things have come together in my life which have created the conditions for melancholy, a state my being knows well. At the Ocean Book Group a couple of weeks ago, a reflection came through around people turning to religion when life is a struggle. I guess this could be viewed from a few perspectives: looking for comfort from an eternal being, the support of a community, or the grounding of wisdom that is beyond ourselves. Although all these qualities of faith are undeniable and, and important, the particular feeling of occurs, I perceive from my experience of the Divine during these times, we are more accurately described recently at the talk given by Enquire at the temple. I was touched by his description of all matter throughout space and time existing in a single particle, and that particle existing in all matter throughout space and time. There is a bigness, so that thought which I've always found comforting in its wholeness Tonight I left my best friend of 14 years' house. Outside my family, this is my longest relationship. As I felt the gravel of her driveway crunch beneath my feet and followed that familiar tree line back to my car on the other side, I had a thought. This walk was indistinct from all the other visions of versions of me undertaking it in times past. After breakups, graduations, jobs left, jobs started, birthdays, coffee cup catch-ups, and list goes on. The gravel is the same, the leaves on the tree have never changed, and it, and it all stays the same and yet changes. All the particulars of my life that seem so big are as tiny as the crunch gravel, and yet that crunch gravel is as huge as a whole life. Somehow this paradox makes me feel reassured, held, and free. Namamita bhū.

Thank you for that.

So we're going to move into a period of meditation, and, um, I just ask you to think about the ground beneath your own feet and We'll just sit and settle into our bodies that, uh, at times can feel so uncomfortable. And just beginning to get an awareness of our breath and just using that breath to release the tension from our bodies. Just trying to breathe in through your nose and out through your nose. Just relaxing the abdomen. Sometimes you struggle to meditate, it's a good idea just to pop your hand on your abdomen, just feel for any tension and use the breath just to release it. Letting the abdomen just gently fall out as you breathe in. And gently pulling in as you breathe out, just keeping your awareness of your nose, breathing in through your nose and out through your nose. We're going to move from a period of meditation, a little stretch out if you need to, and we're going to move into some chanting with a period of silence for a couple of minutes just after chanting. And we're going to do Amitabha. I hope my voice holds.

Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh.

Amee taa.

Amee taa. Amee taa. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabh. Amitabh. Amitabh.

We'll now move into our refuges and precepts. For refuge I go to the Buddha.

For refuge I go to the Buddha.

The one who is awake and full of love.

The one who is awake and full of love.

Namo Buddha.

Namo Buddha.

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. For refuge I go to the Sangha.

For refuge I go to Sangha.

All who live in the Buddha's light.

All who live in the Buddha's light.

Namo Sanghaya.

Namo Sanghaya.

And now we will repeat the precepts with faith in the Three Jewels and in light of my human tendencies.

With faith in Nithridhjors 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 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 take what is not freely given.

I pray that I may become aware of when I fall into sexual misconduct—

—that I'm making me more aware of what I thought was just underfoot.

I pray that I may become aware of when I fall into wrong speech—I prayed on it to come away from my own little literal speech. I pray that I may become aware of when I become intoxicated.

I pray that I may become aware of when I become intoxicated.

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 now for a dharma talk, and this is inspired by two things actually. One is last Saturday's ceremony where I got to spend quite a bit more time with people than perhaps I have in a while, and I got asked lots of questions about my own life and my own practice and how I got to be at the point that I'm at. And I spent a lot of the week reflecting on that and then also drawn to this book again that I haven't read in a while. So this is a Thich Nhat Hanh's book Finding our true home, living in the pure land here and now. And it's a really interesting reflection on the pure land and how to see the pure land in a different way. So it started me thinking about Sukhavati. So in Shakyamuni Buddha's teachings, at some point you come across Sukhavati. In some places are named Sukhavati because It means the land of great happiness. You know, we might see here is Sikavati on a Saturday morning when we arrive. So in Sikavati there's no suffering in the land, and Amitabha dwells there. And Shakyamuni Buddha knows that we have this human weakness You know, that we're scared of suffering. And in a way, this concept of a Pure Land and that one day we'll go there is this sort of sweetener for this life, because we can't avoid suffering. As much as we might want to escape it, we can't. So we're given this alternative that, okay, we do our practice here, we do all the things that we should do here, and then we may attain this this pure land at some point. So we just have to find this way through the suffering to Sukhavati. And when we were doing our prostrations last week as part of the ceremony, it was just before the rain came. I don't know if anybody was aware of that. And you could see for quite a long distance along in that direction, and it felt like there was this pathway through to something other. And it made me think about the Pure Land and actually how hard that journey is to get to that direction. So this big question that we all have is, well, you know, how do we endure the suffering? And people were asking me last week, well, you know, how do you cope with suffering? How have you coped with the suffering that you've had in your own life? And to give you a glimpse into that, if you weren't part of some of the conversations last week, You know, I experienced an immense amount of suffering when my children were born premature. It was an extremely terrifying and difficult journey from one hospital to another just for them to be born. And they were born at 26 weeks and 4 days. And in the months that followed, they were extremely ill.. And, you know, I had to endure the pain of having one baby at home and one baby in hospital and somehow accept that suffering as being okay. Because as— and I'm looking at a room full of women, for those of you who are gonna watch this online, and, uh, for anybody who's ever been a mom, then you'd know how hard that, that, that was to accept that that was the fate. So, um, you know, when people ask me how I coped, you know, lots of people were asking me about my journey to becoming a chaplain and a minister, and, um, how, you know, how did, how did that happen, and what were you doing? So I'm explaining all this journey, and people go, how are you still standing? How do you cope? Um, and my answer is always the same, that I was really lucky that I had my faith. I had already started, training in a Pure Land practice. And, um, you know, that was the thing that really grounded me, that I had that faith. And it taught me how to find moments of happiness in what felt like the most terrifying experience. Um, and it sort of opened this door to understanding happiness and the meaning of it in a different way, because I couldn't have that happiness in the way other people did. I wasn't going to take both my children home straight away. I couldn't be a mom in the same way that other people could be a mom and have all the, the things that came with that new birth. Um, and so I learned how to be present with absolutely everything. You know, there was no avoiding the difficult stuff. So I had these two babies that I knew needed me to love them. Whatever the cost, whatever was going on, you know. So, uh, happiness was a smile or a chant, um, you know, through a difficult procedure for my daughter. And, you know, happiness on the darkest days when we thought they might not live was me sitting by an incubator just chanting, you know, in this low light. And they have these quiet times in neonatal units where they put the lights down low and it's really quiet. I'm just— sometimes if I was the only parent, I would sit and just do some chanting, um, and just to imagine. I used to imagine from right from when they were born, I used to imagine Kuan Yin holding one in one hand and one in the other. I know she has many arms, but I just used to imagine these two arms and these two healthy children, and I used to use this focus to get me through those really difficult times. And then happiness was when my daughter could come out of hospital. At 6 months old, she was allowed out for a couple of hours at a time. And I remember the first time we took her out. If you think about it, she'd only ever been in four walls, and we got to take her outside. And I remember her just being fixed on these leaves of a rose. It was a climbing rose, um, and she was just staring what was left because it was winter, and she was just staring at these remaining leaves, fascinated by it. And then that became a thing for us that we would go out every day in those 2 hours, you know, whatever the weather, we'd go out and have an experience because it was about being present with what that day gave us, um. And it was always about the now because we didn't really know what, what would come next. We didn't know what the next day would bring. So it was always about being present with that day. Um, and that, and that was how I handled it. That's how I've always handled it, is just to, to be in that moment. So when we experience suffering, our first instinct is to run. And, and that's our human nature to want to do that. And I can think of countless times I wished I could just run away, um, you know. And if, and if we don't run, we can feel angry, you know, we can feel resentful, we can be depressed, or our fears around suffering can transform into something else that's unhealthy, you know. We might display unhealthy behaviors like addictions, um, because we just want to escape. We want this distraction because we can't bear the suffering. That's what we want to head for. But of course, we know that if we head into an unhealthy distraction, that's just going to cause us more suffering. So it's just this continual cycle that we will not escape unless we find this way to live instead. And Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, "Understanding and compassion can only grow on the ground of suffering. Suffering is the compost much needed for the flower of understanding and love to grow." And he views Sukhavati with different eyes. He says that it's not a place devoid of suffering. How he sort of translates it, or how at least that's how I understand it, is that the pure land is this place where there's love, there's understanding. And compassion because of the suffering, because all the beings that are there understand this suffering. So then they can, you know, make it disperse, disappear in seconds, because they've got all these skills to get rid of. Whereas us humans sat here in this realm, we're all just trying to find a way to cope with our suffering. So I think what we can learn from, particularly from his teachings and, and many others is that, you know, a pure land is a place where there's love, there's understanding and compassion, and that we can take those qualities really and put them into our lives here. And that's a way that we can kind of gain a little bit of the pure land in the here and now. So if we hold on to those things and we hold on to the present then we can get that, that pure land with Amitābha that we are right in this room, hopefully. Namamīdhami. So now we'll do our prostrations, she says, if she can get up.

Oh.

Namoha miyamu. Namoha miyamu. Namoha miyamu. Namoha miyamu.

So, um, we found out yesterday that Helen, who's a member of the sangha, has Lost her. Sorry, Helen. Lost your father-in-law? No, it's my husband. Your ex-husband. So sorry, I didn't get that right, did I? Sorry, it was only from what I read, so, so sorry. Yeah, so I know that you spent what sounded like a really precious day with him, and I'm sure that he would have been extremely grateful for that love and that compassion. And sounds like you did something really wonderful in terms of moving him on. So as part of that, now we'll move into transferring merit to help. Yeah, so this is for Oliver.

Yeah. Through your vows and through your grace. Of pure land of peace.

Blessed by Amitabha's light, may we care for all living things and the holy earth. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Thanks. Tissue. Somebody on tissue, do you say?