Wednesday Evening Practice: Early Buddhist roots of Pure Land Practice

Good evening, everybody. So we've got more people joining us on Zoom than in the room this evening. There's 6 people, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 people joining remotely, and there's 5 of us here in the room. Satya and Angie are both on their way back from London where they've been demonstrating with Exile Buddhists today. V is joining us online rather than in the room because she's had a positive COVID test. Yeah. My energy is still a bit low actually. Two weeks having, uh, like, I had COVID two weeks ago. My energy is still a bit low, so bear with me if I'm a bit befuddled and don't quite seem to know what I'm doing. Yesterday I felt fine, and then today my energy has been a bit lower, and apparently that can happen as you recover. So we start with a Dharma glimpse. Paul, I think you're going to read yours on Saturday. Does that sound right to you? Yes, great, good. So we're both thinking the same thing. So I will read one from this book this evening. This is a short chapter called What a Change by Dave Joyo-Merrick. A few days back, my daughter Lily completed an assignment for a group project for her first grade class. One of the things all the kids were assigned to do was personalize a drawing of a shamrock. Then each child would have a shamrock that they made displayed together with other items. After Lily completed her shamrock, cut it out and handed it to me, I told her what a great job she did. And I casually questioned where she was going to put her name. She looked at me like I was silly and said, 'Why would I want to put my name on it?' I told her, 'Well, sweetie, that way everyone will know which one is yours.' She calmly looked at me and said, 'I know which one is mine.' Immediately I was enlightened to the teaching. I was attached. I was attached to her getting the credit, and she was already beyond all that. A few years back, I would have pressed my point. And now I recognize hers. Yes, I really like to have my name on things, so maybe I've also got a lot to learn from Lily. We always start each practice with a Dharma glimpse, which is just a moment of insight that comes out of ordinary life that somebody writes up, and you're very welcome to write one yourself and send it to us. Either read it out yourself, or we can read it out for you. Something that you've learned about yourself, something that reminds you of a Buddhist teaching. It's a nice way to start the practice, but it's also a nice practice to do because it gets you thinking about how is this stuff actually working in my life. All right. We're going to go into a period of quiet sitting together now, maybe just pausing before we begin to notice your posture, perhaps leaning forwards and backwards a little bit and left and right, just so you can allow the spine to come to a natural upright position. And then the invitation will be to focus on the breath, noticing the in-breath, the out-breath, the pause between breaths, not trying to breathe in any particular way in this practice, just noticing how it is moment to moment. And naturally, as we bring awareness, in time the mind begins to calm and settle, but we don't need to force anything. It may be that we notice that settling this evening, or it may be that the mind is particularly busy and we don't notice it, but I trust that it will be doing its work. And if, when something else takes your attention, just notice what that is. Now, here's a thought about such and such, or here's a feeling about such and such. And then gently bring awareness back to the breath, and we'll sit for 10 to 15 minutes together. So in a moment we will go into a chanting practice reciting the name Amitabha. Amitabha is the Buddha, a mythical or archetypal Buddha of unmeasured, unmeasurable and unmeasuring compassion. Unmeasurable in the sense that the compassion flows without limits towards us, and unmeasuring in that it doesn't ask anything of us. We don't have to do anything in order to receive it, apart from trust that it is there. So as we recite the name, there's a little melody that repeats we say Amitābha 4 times and then the tune starts up again. We're invoking that spirit, or perhaps experimenting with the idea that there is something we can rest in that holds us and loves us just as we are. Excuse me. Amitabh.

Amitabh. Amitabh.

Amitabh. Amitabh.

Amitabha! Amitabha! Amitabha! Amitabha! Amitaba— Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha. Amitabha.

Saya namo guru dev namo.

So in a moment we'll recite the refuges and precepts. I will ask you to repeat them, but they are on the piece of paper if you want to look at the words as well. The refuges are the things that Buddhists put their trust in, and we say them in a very Buddhist way because we're a Buddhist temple, but you can take them in a much more universal way. So they are the Buddha, which is awakened beings, the Dharma, which is the teachings of awakened beings that point to reality, sometimes called suchness, or things as they are in Buddhism. And also, Dharma also is that reality itself. So it's both the teachings that point to reality and the reality. And Sangha, which is the community of people who practice those teachings. And then we recite the Five Lay Precepts, which are the oldest ethical guidelines and describe how a Buddha behaves naturally. So there's something to use as a mirror for ourselves rather than a stick to beat ourselves up with. And then we have the three lines by Terry Keenan, which for me sum up the whole of the spiritual life. And finally, the Bodhisattva vows, which is us setting an intention or celebrating an intention. To bring all beings to awakening, to awakening of the reality of unconditional love in the universe. So please repeat after me. For refuge I go to the Buddha. For refuge I go to the Dharma. For refuge I go to the Sangha. Namo Sanghaya. With faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may not take life. With faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may not steal. With faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may not fall into sexual misconduct. With faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may not fall into wrong speech. With faith in the Three Jewels, I pray that I may avoid intoxication. No blame. Be kind. Love everything. Now the Bodhisattva vows are in call and response, and I'm sitting up here on my own this evening. I guess I can do both parts, but please join in with the response. 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. Thank you. So I've been reading Karen Armstrong's book Buddha, or maybe The Buddha, I'm not sure, for the study group that I'm part of. I'd really recommend it. She really contextualizes his whole life in a way that I appreciate. And I've just read the section which is describing the Buddha's life after he left home, having realized, oh, life is really full of suffering and I don't know what to do about it, so I'm going to go and see if I can work that out. But before he became enlightened, and at the time there were lots of spiritual teachers. There was lots of monks— they weren't really monks, they didn't live in monasteries, they mostly lived in the forests and went into towns and cities with their begging bowls for food. And there was lively debate between different teachers and different traditions. So the Buddha went out to join one of these communities and see what he could learn. And one of the most important teachers from that time was called Arya Kalama, who said that through, through using your mind and your thought processes, you could come to a kind of peak experience. And the Buddha tried this and it didn't work out. He, he got really good at the logic of it and understood the teachings intellectually, but he wasn't getting the embodied experience of awakening that had been promised. So he went and had a word with the teacher and described the problem. He said, well, how did you just do this through thinking? And Arya Kalama said, well, no, actually I did lots of yoga and meditation. Let me show you what I did. So the Buddha then practices these yogic techniques, these meditative techniques, and he learns to let go of things coming in through the senses and thoughts and feelings and discovers this place of stillness. I guess we might call that a kind of religious experience, deep peace, completely unattached from the troubles of the world. Everything settled. And then he came, you know, he came out of that and lived a bit. And what he discovered was, oh, life is still full of suffering, and I'm still full of greedy thoughts and ill will and My mind is still turbulent. It was a nice experience, but it doesn't seem to have made me into the sort of person I was hoping to be. It hasn't brought about nirvana, the cooling of the passions. So after a while, he left that teacher. And I, I've got a vague recollection that he might have moved through a few different spiritual communities before striking out on his own, trying some very ascetic practices like severe fasting to the, to the point of that his hair was falling out according to some stories, and, and realizing that that didn't work either, and ultimately dropping into meditation underneath the Bodhi tree and then having this awakening experience. And that awakening experience included the workings of his own mind, included encountering his lustfulness, his ill will, included encountering what in the text— who in the text is called Mara, which was the god of death at the time. This kind of you might say, his own shadow side in modern psychological terms. And what he realized was to come to a place of nirvana where the passions are cooled, you must welcome all of those things. You can't just escape them. Enlightenment has to happen with this mind, with this body, or maybe in the next lifetime, or the next lifetime, in the kind of context of the beliefs of the day. But it was about working with what is here rather than running from what is here. And I suspect that that experience of deep calm that he had with that first teacher, Arya Kalama, was really helpful in that later stage of his practice. Because if you have a sense that there is a place of deep calm where things aren't disturbed, like, like a pool on a day with no wind, when the water is perfectly still and the trees and the clouds are reflected in it. If you trust that that is there, it's much easier to welcome in the ill will, the greed, the licentiousness, all those thoughts of your own mind without being overwhelmed by them. Because it's not— you don't think, oh, these are the only things that exist. You think these things are here, but there is something bigger than this and more spacious. That can support me to welcome them and to make friends with myself and to begin to get curious about myself. And Pure Land Buddhism wasn't really a thing in the Buddha's lifetime. And yet those two elements are at the core of Pure Land Buddhism, that there is something, whether we describe it as the being Amitābha or the place, the Pure Land, there is this place of stillness outside of us and available inside of us that is completely calm and loving and where we can find ease. And here we are as ordinary human beings with our wayward minds, and we bring both of those things in relationship to each other. And I have some sense that That is what most good spirituality does, although it's described in many different ways. And I have the sense that even though Pure Land Buddhism didn't exist, we can see the roots of it right back in the Buddha's early experience. So this is the invitation to practice. I guess even in Theravada Buddhism, they talk about calming practices and insight practices. And it's the same in this invitation that I'm making for you to trust that there is the pure land or the Buddha, whatever words you want to give it, that place of ease and stillness and loving kindness. And also to be curious about this particular person that we are, this particular mind. This particular body. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Sorry it's so dark on the Zoom, guys. I didn't turn the lights up high enough. So we finish the evening practice with prostrations, bowing to the Buddha, which is a kind of enactment of those two things. It's me saying here I am with all those wayward thoughts and feelings, and rather than putting those at the center of my life, I'm going to put compassion at the center of my life. And we do that by bowing. It can be quite an odd practice if you haven't done it before. If it feels doable, then I really encourage everyone to try it. If it feels like a stretch then I encourage you to try it. If it feels like a push, then maybe don't worry about it this time. So I'll come up to the front in a second and we'll bow down to kneeling, and we'll also chant Namah Amida Butsu, and which all sounds a bit complicated, but don't worry too much about it.

We dedicate the merits of this incense offering to all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. Throughout space and time. May it be fragrant as Earth herself, reflecting our careful efforts, our wholehearted awareness, and the fruit of understanding so enlightening. May we and all beings be companions of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. May we awaken from forgetfulness and realize our true home.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. So come back to your places. And we will bow to each other, first to one side and then the other. So I will go to my right and you go to your left, and we'll see what happens. There we are. And then to the main shrine. Finally, we will hide our faces and bow to our seats. And we'll finish with the closing verse, which is on the top of the piece of paper, if you want to read along with us. Blessed by Amitabha's light, May we care for the Earth and all living things. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Thank you very much. Please welcome to stay for a cup of tea if you'd like to. Donation bowl is in the hallway. I'm going to just say hello to everyone on Zoom. If someone's happy to put the kettle on, that would be lovely. And we usually just have an informal exit, so— Namaste to do.