Satya and Kaspa - Talk: "Just as You Are" 05/12/2015

Just as you are. Welcome. Welcome and thank you for coming this evening. We're going to do about 20 minutes each and then we'll have hopefully some time for questions afterwards. And I need to try and avoid looking at my dharma teacher who's over there and the camera that's over there, and then I'll be able to talk. Someone look at you, Brian. Okay, I've had an interesting process about this talk this evening, and quite ironic really with the title, Just As You Are. I had a nap this afternoon and woke up at 5 o'clock and just suddenly felt terror at the fact that I was going to be speaking to you all in 2.5 hours. And I thought, right, what do I need to do? I need to be— I need to talk about this and be a Buddhist. I need to say something intelligent that is Buddhist. Because I felt fine about speaking and not being a Buddhist. I felt fine about just saying some stuff. But it felt really important that it was all referenced and embedded in Buddhist theory and so I started frantically reading Buddhist books. I grabbed a few from the shelves and thought maybe I could pull something together, and that didn't work. And then I thought, okay, poetry. Poetry also gives me a way of feeling that I, I know what I'm doing, or I know what I'm saying. So I grabbed some poetry books and I looked at the poems that I go back to again and again. I thought maybe something will give me some inspiration and no. And all the time I was thinking, "Just as you are, just as you are," and I was knowing that it wasn't, I wasn't doing that. I wasn't giving myself that permission to be just as I was, which was scared and feeling like a bit of a fake and feeling very anxious about being judged and feeling anxious about sitting here and opening my mouth and nothing coming out at all. So the next thing I tried was I thought, okay, I'll go and sit with the Buddha because I'm a Buddhist, so that should work. I went into my office and And I looked at my Buddha, and on my Buddha were these beads that Steve gave me. And in that moment of seeing those beads just sat in the Buddha's hands, I felt again the kindness that he had given me with these beads. And then everything was okay, and I felt calmer, and I still felt like I might not know what to say, or that I might not be Buddhist enough, but that didn't matter so much, and everything changed in a moment. And then I thought, okay, I can look in a book now and it'll be, it'll be different. So I picked up this book and I opened it at random. It's a book of lots of different sacred teachings from different spiritual traditions. And I opened the book and this was what I saw, and it's from the Gospel of Thomas. His disciples asked him, 'When will you appear to us? When will we see you?' Jesus replied, 'When you strip naked without shame and trample your clothing underfoot.' just as little children do. Then you will look at the Son of the Living One without being afraid. And it felt perfect. And what Jesus is asking us to do in this little quote is to, to strip naked without shame, to just let go of our ego, to just, to just be seen as we are. And trampling your clothing underfoot just as little children do. In the notes it says, when you can dance joyously without the covering of ego, experiencing and expressing the sheer delight of of being alive as the Living One, you will know the Kingdom of Heaven. So again, there's a kind of an abandon in that. It's like the children don't care, they're just, they're just in the moment, kind of enjoying, enjoying themselves. Then you will look at the Son of the Living One without being afraid. Then you can, you can manage to— well, for me, I wondered about the fear. I wondered what the fear was. And in the notes it says that the fear is a fear that we will have to let go of our ego if we really look at God, if we really allow God to see us. But for me, the fear is a fear of not being okay, of not being acceptable in the eyes of God. In the eyes of the Buddha. And actually, we don't have to be afraid of that, because we are, but we don't know that until we open ourselves up to be seen, and that's the really terrifying bit. It reminds me of those moments in therapy where We talk about something in theory. We talk about maybe the client's afraid that if they tell me something I'll be disgusted by them, or they might be afraid that if they start crying they won't be able to stop crying. And we can talk about it as long as we like, but we won't know— the client doesn't know whether that will be true or not until they do it. You can't You can't protect yourself from the unknown of that moment. The only way to find out is to step off the cliff, is to step into the abyss, and then in that space, then we find out. I think for me all of the really important moments of learning and connection in my life have been when I've stepped into that space with another person or with the Buddha of really not knowing whether I will be okay or not, not knowing what they will show me in their face, not knowing, not knowing whether I'll get love or not back from them. And that's how it is to be vulnerable, and that's how it is to do what I'm doing right now. That's how it is to come to something that you've not been to before on your own. That's how it is to have a birthday when you don't like people paying you attention. All of these things that happen to us every day, we're always stepping, we're always at that edge. Well, we're not always at that edge, but I guess if we're not at that edge, then there's something that sort of deadens And I guess that's something else that feels important about this vulnerability, this exposing our broken bits to the world, to the Buddha, is that it's actually the It's actually the messy bits, the broken bits, that allow us to really understand how it is to be a broken, messy human being, and that's where— that's how we connect with each other. I think that might— yeah, I read it, I was reading a quote somewhere else I've lost it now, but it was about that lovely quote by Leonard Cohen, "There is a crack in everything, it's how the light gets in." And it was speaking about how it's only by the grace that comes into us through our own cracks that we can connect with other people. Other people's, their own messiness, and really feel what it's like to be someone else. If two perfect beings come together, there's nothing for them to hook into, like two snooker balls maybe. You just kind of glance off each other and that's it.

Are.

It's the tendrils and the tangles and the holes and those bits, that's, that's what allows us to form relationships with each other, and that's where the healing happens. So just as you are, The process that I went through earlier this evening, the moment of change was when I was able to feel myself acceptable as I was, and that wasn't something that I did for myself, it was something that someone else had already done for me. And as Pure Land Buddhists, our biggest hope isn't ourself. Our biggest hope is something outside of ourself that shows us something that we can't see. And I guess that if we could, if we could see ourselves, we would already have seen it. So there's no, there's no need for, for anything to happen. One of the difficult things is that it's, it's sometimes those things don't get through. Sometimes we'll try as hard as we can to be open to them, but we're just not open. We're just too caught caught in our— the whirrings of our brain. And so I think for me, Just As You Are, it's really important that Just As You Are also includes those times when we're not— we're not having those moments, the time before the moments. And that might be an hour, as it was for me this evening, or it might be 20 years, depending on what we're struggling with, or it might be several lifetimes. That's been one of the things that I've learned this year living here and coming into contact with more people, is really, um, the, the, the depth of our dysfunction, the, the deep, deep, deep, deep, deep chasms of fear and the karma that has brought us to wherever we are. I think I still underestimate that even though I've been meeting with clients as a therapist for 15 years, I think I still underestimate how difficult it is for some people in some situations. And I think that's also because, well, it kind of works both ways, but that's also because I underestimate how hard it is for me. Quite often underestimate how hard it is for me. I've only just started realising this, and whenever I do that, it's unhelpful because I'm expecting something of myself that I— it's actually, it's possible, but it's, it's not very possible. It's, it's hard. So, so that's something that, that's been becoming clearer to me this year, is, is I've kind of watched other people struggle, and I've been incredulous. How can they be struggling with that? How can they still be struggling with that? I've given them the solution, and I've watched them continue to struggle and continue to struggle. And what's just sinking in really is, ah, that is— it's that hard for them. And as I can see that in them, then I start to notice how hard certain things are for me. And that comes more into the light. And as it comes into the light, it's a great relief. It's a great relief for me to see it as it is rather than hiding it from myself and others. And it's a great relief to understand that other people are where they are and they're trying the best they can, and that's okay. It might not be okay, but it's how it is. So that's the other thing I wanted to say about Just As You Are, is it's not just about— it's not superficial. It goes right, right down, and it goes much further down than we can ever imagine the depths to go. That's where the really deep healing happens for me, is when I can see some awfulness in myself and survive it, and I can see some awful illness in other people and survive it. It's not for the faint-hearted, this kind of life, or this kind of way of being. As I'm talking, I'm thinking about that— I don't know if you know it— but that horrible feeling of kind of shame and just intense discomfort that you feel when you see something about yourself for the first time and that you realize you've been doing it for all of your life and you've never really— oh, it's just awful. But that's the kind of— that's what we're talking about. That it's, it's that, it's that having a clear sight of something that we do, daring to be able to to acknowledge it to ourselves, and other people probably have known it for a long time, but bearing to be able to include it as a part of who we are and surviving it. I think Caspar's going to talk a bit about faith, and so I'm not going to say much more about that because I might—

I don't know what I was thinking.

I'm sure you will. So I'm at the end of my 20 minutes and I'm just wondering how I've done, what people are thinking about me. I'm thinking, "Oh, it's okay, jumbled in the middle." Yeah, I guess we go in and out of it, don't we? We go in and out of judging. But the best thing to do is just try and get out of the way and And I say this and then get in my own way almost immediately. That I always get into the most trouble when I'm trying to do something and I'm conscious of how it might be being perceived, or I want to do a good job. And all of those reasons are about self, they're about me surviving, and getting out of the way is really just saying to the Buddha, just use me as you want to use me, I'll just be a mouthpiece, and it doesn't matter whether people think I look stupid, whether I get things wrong, because that's not my business. It's not my business to know about that. Yeah, it's not an easy thing to talk about. Hopefully I've got out of the way a little bit. And there will be a chance to ask questions afterwards, but I'm going to hand over to Kasper.

Namaste. Thank you. The main reason for asking Satya to go first was selfish, because I thought once she's spoken, then I'll have a sense of something to respond to or give me some— something to talk about. But a couple of things have happened. One is that I had some ideas of my own before coming into the room, and then what you said has sparked off lots of different things. So I'm now— whereas earlier in the day I didn't think— I didn't know that I had anything to say, this was a blank canvas— now I feel like the page is Too full. I just need to pick one or two things out. One of the words that you hear quite often in Pure Land Buddhism is acceptable. You used it a little bit in your talk, and I've become less and less trustful of the word acceptable because it has a sort of shadow to it, and the shadow is something like that it can be taken superficially or glibly. Oh, unacceptable, therefore, you know, that's sort of okay, without a sort of real meeting or real experience of the kind that Satya was talking about. Or it can lead to a situation, oh, unacceptable, therefore, I don't need to worry about how I'm interacting with other people. Maybe worry is too strong, but I don't need to consider the effects of my actions on the world because they're just all acceptable. In Japan, this was called licensed evil by the people there. The Buddhist scholars who weren't Pure Land Buddhists leveled this charge at Pure Land and said, look, some of your followers are just going out committing sins because they know that they're acceptable just as they are. When I have the kind of experience that Satya talked about earlier, when I, when I meet the Buddha, when I see I see myself reflected clearly either in some interaction I've had and it's shown me something about myself. When I'm able to bring myself in that state to the Buddha, it's not— acceptable isn't the first word that What word comes to mind to describe that experience? Words that come to mind is maybe lovable, or you use the word kindness. You said that somebody had shown you kindness. This is my experience of coming in front of Amida Buddha, that no matter what I've done or the kind of person I am, regardless of how acceptable society might find me, or might not find me, or how acceptable I might find myself, there is still something that is able to be kind towards me. There's something that's able to be loving towards me. And to me, this is a sort of more profound experience than acceptable, because acceptable sort of says, "Oh, you're okay, no worries," whereas lovable says, "Well, actually, this is the state that you've come to me in, and I know maybe that you're not pleased about this yourself, or that you've— look at this trail of mess that you're bringing into my house, and now sit down, I'll make you a cup of tea, and I'll love you anyway." There's something that's sort of— there's a tenderness that goes with that, that comes out of a real seeing of the human condition. The Buddha, when he sees you just as you are, he doesn't just see the stories that you tell about yourself, or that I tell about myself. I'm this sort of person, I'm that sort of person. He also sees the bits of you that you don't see. Yourself. Sometimes, as you say, that other people see. He sees this face in front of you that you've got the potential to step into, whether you do or you don't. And whether you do or you don't, he's able to still be kind. And to still love you regardless. And sometimes when the sangha is really a clean and clear reflection of the Buddha. We have this experience with each other. We will know that, or we maybe feel ourselves that we haven't done something right, or that we've messed up, or even that we've hurt somebody. Maybe we feel that we don't deserve to be loved sometimes. And yet we come into the community and spontaneously somebody is kind towards us, somebody does something loving towards us. You talked about getting out of the way, you could say that that sort of spontaneous love that comes up, that's the sort of just the Buddha moving through the community. And the experience of being on the other end of that can be quite transformative. It can also be quite difficult because If you don't believe that you're lovable just as you are, to encounter something loving you means that those beliefs get challenged, and that stirs all sorts of feelings up and can bring waves of emotion with it. Maybe even some grief that you suddenly— you're feeling loved and you thought, gosh, maybe that was true all the time, and for years I've been sort of not noticing it, just going about my business. This is judging myself, and sometimes it can be a really easy, pleasant experience. Satya Robyn said I might say something about faith, and I'm very lucky that most of the circles that I move in, the word faith doesn't scare people off very much, but it does scare people off in the wider world at the moment for lots of different reasons. I read an article in The Guardian today by Tanya Gold, who was writing about her experience of being a lapsed Jew married to a Christian and choosing to bring her child up within the Jewish faith, even though she was full of doubt herself and hadn't been practicing for a long time, and her husband in fact she would go out and discover the rituals for her even though they were outside his tradition. He'd say, "Look, this is how you do this. Now you go and stand there and you read this." And he'd write out how the words sounded because her Hebrew wasn't very good. And she sort of became this transmitter of faith for her son despite herself, I mean despite what her conscious mind was saying. And there was something very touching about the article about her particular struggles. Is there anything there? No, I don't think so, but am I just rebelling? All this sort of thing. I enjoyed, I don't know if I enjoyed reading it, but I found there was something that resonated with me about my own experience that maybe I'll say a little bit about as well. But one of the things that really struck me were all the comments underneath, which were very disparaging of faith and very judgmental. How can you believe in fairy tales? You shouldn't bring your child up like this. All this sort of thing, page after page. And there was also something about those comments that resonated with me as well, because 15 years ago I wouldn't have written them perhaps down on the webpage, but I'd have been thinking them as I was reading the article. I recently realized that I sort of reserve a part of my mind for that sort of attitude still, that sort of skepticism. There's a bit of me looking over my shoulder, questioning the kind of thing that Satya's just talked about. In order to write a book, you sort of— you don't need a completely worked-out position, but you need reasonably firm ground to stand on, just so that you can explain it to other people, especially if it's an introductory book. So I went through a process with the writing of sort of working out my faith, if you like. Working out something that I could talk about, or that was good enough that I could speak about it to other people in a way that was intelligible. But all the time there's that little part of me saying, just questioning that experience of just as you want. And somehow the more I became aware of that pocket recently, the less it got in the way of me and the Buddha. And the reason I've sort of talked about this is because a couple of days ago, yesterday, I'm not sure, the day before, I had quite a strong experience of feeling the presence of Amida. And even as I'm speaking, there's a bit of me that's going, "Oh, should you really be saying that? What are people going to think?" You know, there's a bit of a shame around being religious or having that kind of sense. I'm very careful in the book not to pin down immediately. I say, "Well, you know, you could think of it like this." Maybe it's— I don't know whether I say it, but there's a sort of idea, maybe it's this archetype, maybe it's what they call big mind in Zen, maybe it's something in an imaginative space. But my personal experience is of something that isn't any of those things. It's bigger than that, and it's outside of that. And I find that quite difficult to speak about. And yet when I come into contact with it, It's almost the image that comes to mind. It's like going to a beach and lying down in the hot sand and just sort of going, ah, I could just rest here now in the sunshine, being supported by something and having these waves of warmth, the kind of golden light. If I'm not careful, I can talk myself out of that experience quite quickly with the questioning, so— but the experience of it is that the beach is always there in that moment. I guess that's where you get things like people talking about eternity and timelessness, because in the moment of encountering it, you have a sense of its beginninglessness and endlessness, even though the experience of it is bound by— it started at this time and it stopped at this time. And it feels like coming home, and it feels like there's somebody sitting there with a rice bowl saying, "I knew you'd come back eventually, but you know, I've been watching you making lots of noise and fussing around out there in the world." You know, I've been keeping a seat warm for you. And if we have any power at all, it is to remember those moments, or to trust in other people's experience of them, in the teachings that we've been given. And perhaps, from my experiences, that if I can remember those moments, I'm less likely to go— the next time I go out into the world, I'm likely to thrush around a little bit less, to make a little bit less noise, because I'm less worried about about controlling things to produce a particular outcome, because ultimately, regardless of what outcome I create, I can still go back to the beach, I can still go back to the house where there's the warm seat with somebody with a wry smile waiting for me to come home. And there's the sort of— that's the power of Piyalang, but it's also where the paradox is, because you can see, as I said at the beginning, if you just sort of take that in a good way Then, I don't know, maybe that's okay, but it feels like there's the potential to forget what the space is really like, what the warm chair is like, what the beach is like, and just go back into the world and fall back into your old habit patterns. We'll do that anyway, I'm sure. And maybe there isn't much choice about how often we remember that, or how much of ourselves we can bring to the Buddha. I like to think that there is, but maybe that's just a way of making myself feel better, like I've got a bit of control over the progress that I'm making. So I don't really have a neat place to finish. I created a sort of neatish place for the book because it sort of needed one. That was, that was part of the purpose of writing it, to have something that you could hand over and say, here's something in a nice package that you can bring yourself in relationship to and use as a springboard into your own exploration. But now it's done, I'm springboarding off it myself into a place where explanations are less neat. If I know anything, when I know something important, it's that I don't really need to worry too much about having a neat package or a great theory of everything, or even working out whether this kind of practice leads to this sort of result. Or not. Because regardless of whether it does or it doesn't, there's that space reserved for me, that warm seat with that kind of loving kindness waiting for me to come back to it. And if you want to talk about transformation, if you need to talk about something transformative. That's the place that it happens. That's— I'm not sure I can give you 3 steps to get there or to get from there to enlightenment, but maybe I'll have worked it out by tomorrow.