Kaspa reflects on refuge and Nembutsu practice, using the sun-and-clouds metaphor to describe trusting a steady spiritual presence despite fluctuating emotions. The talk explores "unconscious Nembutsu" and how faith persists even when we feel distant from the Buddha.
Chapters
So welcome to the afternoon. I wanted to share something of my experience of refuge and nimbutsu. I was thinking back to my early days of practicing Nembutsu, taking refuge. And I had one or two powerful experiences of feeling quite close to the Buddha, feeling completely accepted. And for me, the form that would take would be the acceptance, and there would be relief with that, and it would often also be accompanied by a sense of grief, like, "Oh," which was to do with, "Oh, I'm feeling this now, but I haven't been feeling it in the past." Some sadness coming up about the distance between me and the Buddha, that I hadn't got that experience of feeling, "Oh, I can just lean back and feel accepted just as I am." And I'm remembering a particular summer out in France where I fell into craving those experiences, where I fell into wanting to feel close to the Buddha. More of the time, or even all of the time. And actually in my day-to-day life, what I felt was just ordinary things, ordinary unhappiness, frustration with things not going the way I wanted them to, frustration with myself for not being able to relate to people in the way that I wanted to, and in particular moments, this sense of, 'Why am I not feeling close to the Buddha? Where have you gone? Why have you left me on my own?' So even some anger or frustration in there. And then at some point the closeness comes, and this wave of relief and feeling held and being able to relax, and that sense of sadness and grief, "Oh, it's here now," and I guess anticipating it going away again, like my voice is beginning to go away. And when I look back at that time now, what I see is that I wasn't really taking refuge in the Buddha. I was taking refuge in a particular experience that was dependent upon my kamma, upon my state of mind, as much as it was upon the Buddha. Valter hasn't served his vegesa yet, which is my fault because I didn't send it to him, so he didn't have the opportunity. But when he does, it will have the sun and clouds image on. Most of— many of you have got one. And what I was taking refuge in those years ago was— somebody's looking in the window. What I was taking refuge in all those years ago was the sun on a day where there weren't any clouds. And the sun on the day when there weren't any clouds is a rare gift, it's a grace, and it's outside of my control. And in desperately craving for that, I was confusing the Buddha with myself. The phrase that I wrote down when I was thinking about what I was going to say I say in this talk was unconscious Nembutsu. So I wanted to get across something of the spirit of Nembutsu, or taking refuge, that I now practice with, which isn't to do with waiting for a particular moment or having a particular state of mind while I'm practicing. But trusting that the light is sort of seeping in regardless of how many clouds there are. So some of you will know this story, but years ago when you had the chanting day in the therapy center, Kusuma, I had the experience of being quite frustrated through that day. I was trying— I found my— we were doing all these different chants, different variants on the Nembutsu, and it sounded beautiful. There were some really lovely voices in the room, and my mind kept falling into trying to work out some aspect of the teaching, trying to kind of square all the circles, cross all the T's, the T's, dot all the I's, and if this teaching says this and that teaching says that, how do those things fit together? And we all know that Buddhism is full of contradictions, and I was just trying to work it all out, and intellectually, I suppose in that moment I was trying to take refuge in intellectualism, in the opposite of the nyukkoli that we heard about, to work it all out with my mind, and then I'd have the right answer, and then I could relax. Only I couldn't get the right answer. So this frustration was building up inside me, I could sort of feel like I was getting tight and tied in knots, and at the same time I'm chanting, my mouth's moving, I'm breathing in and out, I'm saying the words of the Nembutsu. And we finished and we had some food at the end, I went and sat in the corner, I thought, "Oh, I don't want to talk to anybody, I'm in a real mood." I can't work out what's going on. And somebody walked past and said hello, and I found myself lighting up and greeting them really warmly. And a part of me sort of was standing over my shoulder going, "Oh, where's this good mood appeared from?" And I really had the sense that the practice had worked on me despite what my conscious mind was doing that day. And I had a really lovely conversation, and we were in really good spirits on the journey home, and I was sort of full of joy for a while. So when I say unconscious Nembutsu, that's something of what I'm talking about. The fact that just saying the words of Nembutsu, taking refuge in that way, even though my mind, my conscious mind was full of a particular sort of cloud and the Buddha felt hundreds of thousands of miles away. Actually, something still happened in that process. Something broke through despite my— the best efforts of my mind. And this can happen in the course of a day, of course. It can happen across months and years that we feel nothing is really changing. I'm not getting any better. Most of the time when I'm practicing now, I'm not having those peak experiences. I'm just saying, 'Nembutsu' and feeling very ordinary. And it's possible when that's happening to become disheartened. Oh, I've been practicing nimbutsu for years, but even so, when I go in the shrine room and sit down and start chanting, actually my mind is, who knows where it's going, thinking about all sorts of things. And yet my refuge is beyond that experience, is something bigger than that. It's trusting that the Buddha is there regardless of whether my practice is going well or going badly, regardless of what state of mind I'm in, regardless of how many clouds there are. When Satya and I went up to Yorkshire in the summer for a week's holiday, we listened to some talks by Richard Rohr about— he was speaking about addiction, but really he used that as a springboard to talk about all sorts of things. Particularly he was talking about addiction to self, which is this kind of familiar phrase to those of us that have studied Buddhist psychology. But one of the little branches of the tree of his talk was mentioning St. John's at the Cross— St. John at the Cross— The Dark Night of the Soul, and he'd recently read Gerald May's commentary on this text. We often use The Dark Night of the Soul to mean a time time when we feel particularly troubled. But it was originally meant simply to mean a time when we felt distant from, in the Christian context, God. Or, you know, in those— in that kind of time I was talking about in France, that distance that I felt from the Buddha, the despair that goes alongside feeling, 'Oh, I'm on my own. What I take refuge in has disappeared.' And Richard Rohr's suggestion was actually one, that we are being worked on all the time, slowly. We're still receiving something, like on the chanting day that I talked about. And two, Maybe that isn't— maybe even there's something in that experience that's— how can I put this? That sometimes to encounter the Buddha is a very intense experience. And to encounter our own bambu nature is a very intense experience. And to be directly confronted with our rough edges over and over again actually can push us into being overwhelmed. And yet there are times in life where we look back and go, oh, I've let go of this habit pattern, I've stopped doing such and such such. I wasn't trying to, but just I noticed that I'm less gossipy than I used to be, or I'm less compulsive around this than I used to be, or I'm more relaxed in these situations. And Richard Rohr's suggestion was that the light is working on us even though we're not conscious of it through those periods, slowly melting away those aspects of our Bambú nature. And that, that's a gift, because to be conscious of that might be a much more difficult process, and one that we'd be actively resisting, because human beings' egos are not built to like change. So now, my refuge is a deep trust in something long-term, a deep trust in something foundational that sits underneath everything I do. And that's kind of enough for me these days. If I was giving a talk about refuge a few years ago, I might have suggested that it was something one does— I guess I've still got a question mark about this. Okay, so I would have suggested that it's something one does over and over again in every moment, that you either take refuge in the Buddha or you take refuge in yourself. That was a teaching from Dhammajjadai, really picked up on and appreciated and it is true in every moment you are either taking refuge in the Buddha in love or in yourself, in selfishness, in self-defense. But these days I think that's less in my control than I used to, that even that act of choosing, oh, right now I'm going to turn to the Buddha and that will open my heart and I'll be able to handle this situation, even that is outside of out of my control. That's part of my deep bon vu nature. My sense is these days that as long as I put myself in the path of the light, that's enough actually. Like a great solar sail on a spaceship. The light will propel me where I need to go. I'm happy to explain what that is later if anybody doesn't know. Is this— I'm going to explain it now because to me it's exciting. It's this idea that you can have a very thin sheet of foil that collects rays of light from the sun and use that to propel your spaceship. And for me, taking refuge is a bit like that, just putting myself in the path of those rays of light and being lifted forward. But often being lifted forward without the knowledge of my everyday mind, of my conscious mind. Sometimes I go, 'Oh, look how quickly Venus just went past.' This is the process. 'Yes, I mean, things are changing. Oh, look what's happened. Look where I am now in my life. What a gift. What a grace.' So this is what I wanted to sort of get across this afternoon, this idea of— I don't know if unconscious is the right word because it's not as if I'm proven, you know, knocked out on the floor, subconscious maybe. 'Nembutsu'—taking refuge as trusting in something beyond how I feel, beyond my felt sense, beyond my own estimation of how close or far away from the Buddha I am. Refuge as deeply trusting that stepping onto the boat of Amida, to use Nagarjuna's analogy, will take me to the far shore in its own time, and that that boat will take me to the places I need to go to learn what I need to learn. Namaste. Namaste.
