The Great Way Avoids Picking and Choosing

Magic. So welcome everybody. A couple of days ago I listened to a talk by John Tarrant, who is a Zen master who works a lot with koan practice, and it illuminated something for me that I'd never really been able to figure out. It's a poem that was written in ancient China, and I've forgotten the dates. It's called Faith in Mind by Sung Seng, and ironically it was written as a sort of anti-Pure Land propaganda, sort of. That perhaps exaggerates it too much, but it was written to convince people or to suggest to people that the Zen way of doing things is better than the pure Land Way. But we're very lucky in this day and age that we can receive teachings from many different places. The Dharma appears in many different forms, which is why it was wonderful to have people from 8 different traditions here on Friday evening celebrating Vesak with us. Anyway, I wanted to share the first few lines of the poem. With you and just talk about them. So it begins by saying, "The Great Way is not difficult. It avoids picking and choosing. Not loving, not hating, illumination or enlightenment." There's lots of different— Chinese is funny because it— there's lots of different ways of translating the same line that all— that are all true. It's like in English, if you write one sentence it usually sort of means one thing, whereas if you write a sentence in Chinese, it can mean 2 or 3 different things. So, it might mean that the Way avoids picking and choosing, or it might mean that if you want to walk through the Great Way, or the Tao is the Chinese character, if you want to be in the flow, just avoid picking and choosing yourself. And for years I thought this meant, well, don't choose 'If someone asks you if you want tea or coffee, don't have a preference.' Of course, usually I did have a preference, but it's not really talking about it, because of course we have to make choices all the time. So if it's not talking about choices, what does it mean? I mean, sometimes if you really want coffee and there isn't coffee, that can get you into trouble. So that is one layer of the teaching. Don't hold on too tightly to your preferences. But the truth is we do have preferences, and it's not a big issue in your spiritual life to favor tea over coffee most of the time, as long as there is tea or whichever you prefer. It means don't pick and choose what you allow into your awareness. Don't avoid some things in the world or in yourself just because you don't like them or they don't sit suit you. Don't have an experience of the world that is only partial. Allow everything in. Experience everything as a gift from the world and also from your own mind. And John Tarrant says in the talk that I listened to the other day, you can see this very clearly in your meditation practice. If you're sitting and a thought or a feeling appears and you don't like it and you try to fight it or you try to get rid of it, that creates more commotion, that creates discomfort in the mind. If you allow that thought to come, "Oh yeah, this is what's, this is what's in me at the moment, okay," eventually the mind will settle down of its own accord. The great way is— includes everything. Without loving, without hating, so without esteeming some things and putting other things down, just appreciating everything for what it is. This is This is enlightenment. This is one form of enlightenment. And not loving, not hating. This refers to human loving and hating, really. The Buddhas also love things, but they do so indiscriminately, and it's a different kind of experience. So we could perhaps say not lusting and not hating, not being greedy and not being hateful. Allow everything in, be kind to everything, love everything just as it is. This is the manifestation of the Great Way. And this tells us about the nature of the Buddha, it tells us about the nature of Amitābha. Amitābha allows everything in the world, he loves everything in the world, just as it is. There's no picking and choosing. You can come, but you can't come. This thought's okay, but that thought isn't okay. Welcome it all in. Love everything. This is the ideal. It's something that we can work towards in our own practice. But we probably aren't going to perfect it in this lifetime. There's always going to be some picking and choosing. In those moments, what brings us solace, what moves us back towards the position of equanimity, is knowing, perhaps knowing, or bringing ourselves in relationship to the Buddha, who is embodying not picking and choosing, who is loving everything without lusting after some things, without pushing other things away. Regardless of whether we can do this for ourselves, if we bring ourselves in relationship to something that can do it, this starts to undermine our own sense of judgment, our own closed-mindedness, our own picking and choosing, and slowly, slowly, slowly, the more time we spend with Amitābha, with the Buddha, the easier it becomes for us to embody the Great Way, to avoid picking and choosing, to avoid lusting after some things and hating others. Ironically, or paradoxically, when we notice ourselves picking and choosing and pushing some things away or drawing other things towards us, you might say by the standards of this poem, that's a failure in practice, but it's actually a great opportunity because if in that moment we can remember that the Buddha is there accepting us as we are, picking and choosing things, accepting the things that we're not choosing and the things that we are choosing, that can be a real moment of transformation. So the failure, through encountering the Buddha, allows us to blossom and allows us to come back to the place of, "Ah, actually I don't need to pick and choose because there's this bigger sense, there's this bigger container." The Way isn't picking and choosing, the Buddha isn't picking and choosing. If the Buddha has confidence in everything, if the Great Way has confidence in everything. I can also have faith that all is okay just as it is. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.