A talk given at Unity Grapevine 2/21/11
also at buddhafrog.podbean.com
In the past few months the Zen community has, like other spiritual communities in the past, been shaken by revelations of scandals involving unethical sexual relationships between students and teachers. These situations involved violations of multiple precepts over an extended period of time by Teachers who claim to represent the Buddhist tradition. Most recently a well-known Zen teacher disrobed (the equivalent of giving back the precepts) but did not give up the title of Roshi, which indicates a transmitted teacher of the Buddha-dharma. In a letter signed by 44 members of the American Zen Teachers’ Association, he was recently asked to undergo therapy and take various other steps to make amends to those who were harmed by his actions. You can read their letter on the “Sweeping Zen” site.
The Zen Buddhist community as a whole is struggling to find a way to respond to these situations in an appropriate manner that is fair and respectful to all parties involved and incorporates Buddhist principles of wisdom and compassion.
Our thoughts and actions in response to this situation can incorporate the Buddha’s teachings on wisdom and compassion.
The Diamond sutra describes how a bodhisattva can think and act in order to liberate themselves from guilt and to forgive others when harmful mistakes are made.
“At that time the Venerable Subhuti stood up, bared his right shoulder, put his knee on the ground, and folding his palms respectfully, said to the Buddha, “World-Honored One, it is rare to find someone like you. You always support and show special confidence in the bodhisattvas. World-Honored One, if sons and daughters of good families want tot give rise to the highest, most fulfilled, awakened mind, what should they rely on and what should they do to master their thinking?”
The Buddha is asked by his disciple Subhuti to describe how a bodhisattva should act and think. What is a bodhisattva?
Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “Bodhisattvas are compassionate people whose interest is to relieve their own suffering and the suffering of their fellow beings. “Bodhi” means awakened and “sattva” means being. A Bodhisattva is an awakened being who helps other beings to wake up.”
The bodhisattva is a concept from Mahayana Buddhism. It represents an important innovation in early Buddhist thinking. The Mahayana emphasizes personal experimentation, discovery and verification of truth. The bodhisattva was frequently a layperson, and their orientation was often mystical or transcendental, holistic and devotional. Mahayana Buddhism emphasizes the value of together-action as opposed to individual liberation. In the word Mahayana, “maha” means big and “yana” means vehicle. Mahayana Buddhism teaches that all beings must be saved together. This is why it’s called the Big Vehicle.
The dharma is frequently compared to a raft. Enlightenment is the other shore. To attain enlightenment we must embark upon a journey across the river. So how will we get across the river? There is a choice: We can cross the river alone as individuals, or we can cross together as a group.
Back in the days when the Mahayana began to emerge as a new form of Buddhism, the proponents wanted to come up with what we would call “a favorable marketing image” to distinguish it from the original Buddhist teachings. So the image they selected was a big vehicle, like a big raft, and it was meant to show the inclusive nature of the new teachings. The earlier teachings emphasized individual liberation, so the Mahayana followers referred to them as the little vehicle teachings.
Either way we are going to use the teachings as the raft. Our goal is to cross the river and get to enlightenment, which is the other shore. Now if you were a single individual looking for individual liberation, you could take a pretty small raft across the river. You might be able to build a raft the size of your zabutan, and if the waters were not too choppy, you could make it across to the other side on the little vehicle.
The four noble truths and the eight fold path will enable you to achieve individual liberation. They are important to either style of Buddhism. Mahayana teachings have a slightly different emphasis.
Suppose that you are a bodhisattva and you want to take the whole sangha across with you. You are not just worried about yourself, because you want all your friends to be liberated too. So you get together with your sangha and you make a raft the size of all our cushions strapped together and you all take that big raft across to the other side together. That is what is meant by the “big vehicle” or Mahayana teachings. This is the style of teachings found in the Diamond sutra, the prajna wisdom teachings.
Actually, our whole planet is like a raft. We may not like everyone, but we all want to get across the river. The Mahayana tells us we can all get there together. In the next section the Buddha teaches us how this can be accomplished with compassion and wisdom.
“The Buddha said to Subhuti, “This is how the bodhisattva- mahasattvas master their thinking…We must lead all beings to the ultimate nirvana so that they can be liberated. And when this innumberable, immeasurable, infinite number of beings has become liberated, we do not in truth, think that a single being has been liberated.”
“Why is this so? If, Subhuti, a bodhisattva holds on to the idea that a self, a person, a living being, or a life span exists, that person is not an authentic bodhisattva”.
The awakened Buddha teaches the assembly about the practices of compassion and wisdom. He tells us that a bodhisattva saves all beings without seeing any beings. What could this possibly mean?
Prajna wisdom is based on the idea of emptiness, which involves the assertion that there is no permanent, single, independent self. That means that we all have to co-exist and inter-be with others. In order to understand what the Buddha meant by “no self”, we will examine three important Buddhist ideas: Impermanence, Inter-being and Non-self.
Impermanence means that everything is always changing. There is no permanent self in the body or mind. You can see this for yourself in meditation, as thoughts and sensations and ideas come and go.
Our thoughts are constantly changing; and our bodies are changing too. We look and think differently than we did a few years ago. When you leave tonight you may feel different than you did when you arrived. Ideally you will feel a little more relaxed and happy. Change is often a good thing, because it allows us to become stronger in our practice and let go of suffering.
Inter-being or dependent co-arising means that we co-exist and interact with everything else around us. So our self is really composed of many non-self elements. In his book on the Heart Sutra, Thich Nhat Hanh uses a sheet of paper to illustrate inter-being and non-self:
Read TNH inter-being examples of rose and cloud from The Heart of Understanding, p. 3
[ Part of what the Buddha is doing in this sutra is to try and break through some of the habitual ways we use words, and subvert some of the ways in which words and ideas subtly distort our perceptions. He often uses words in playful or unexpected ways to show us how thinking can trip us up, especially when it comes to spiritual matters]
Since we are always changing and we depend on others to exist, the Buddha said that there is no permanent, single, independent self.
Consider how your own thinking has been influenced by your family, your society, the teachings you have heard, the experiences you have had, where you have lived, and so on. My experiences are quite different from those of a woman taking part in the revolution in Egypt.
So each of us has certain random factors, or non-self elements that form our personality. Sometimes we start to think that these things are who we are, and we start to use them to define an “I, me, mine” but they are actually just influences, or non-self elements. It is the same way for the things we feel, sense, think, remember, and so on.
Likewise, things that we observe do not exist independently; they are dependent on our mind to perceive them. Our minds are looking at life through all these layers of personal factors as if they were flawed lenses distorting our perceptions of the things we observe. This distorted perception of reality, or the gap between our understanding and the way things really are, is what causes our suffering.
When we realize that everything is impermanent and that we don’t exist as separate entities in the solid, unchanging way we usually imagine that we do, we become less attached to ideas of I, me and mine. We begin to notice some of the ways in which we are alike, and that what happens to you affects me and vice versa. Our sense of the isolation begins to dissolve, and we become more open and sensitive to the needs of others. We start to become less attached to things, and we do not try so hard to cling and grasp and possess them. We could say that in practice understanding and experiencing no-self can lead to no-selfishness (no attachment, and no expectations).
The Buddha uses the example of generosity to illustrate how this works in practice.
“Subhuti, if a bodhisattva does not rely on any concept (of self, attachment, expectation) when practicing generosity, then the happiness that results from the virtuous act is as great as space. It cannot be measured. Subhuti, the bodhisattvas should let their minds dwell in the teachings I have just given.”
The Buddha used generosity to illustrate how a bodhisattva acts with non-attachment.
The Tathagata (which is another name for the Buddha) taught that when a bodhisattva practices generosity (or any of the other paramitas) it will bring the greatest happiness if it is done without attachment, or the expectation of any reward. For example, think of how much fun it is to do things for children. You don’t really need to get something back to feel happy to do something nice for a child.
Yunyan asked Daowu, ‘How does the Bodhisattva Guanyin use those many hands and eyes?’ Daowu answered, ‘It is like someone in the middle of the night reaching behind her head for the pillow.’ (BCR 89)
Generosity and kindness can become automatic, like a person reaching out in their sleep to adjust a pillow.
We can learn to practice compassion for others without thought or expectation of reward, as something that we simply do naturally.
The understanding of emptiness and practice of compassion can lead to our own liberation, and to the liberation of others.
“The Buddha said to Subhuti, In a place where there is something that can be distinguished by signs (words), in that place there is deception. If you can see the signless nature of signs, then you can see the Tathagata (the Buddha)”.
The enlightened Buddha describes the understanding of the emptiness of form as a key to liberation. We can use this understanding as a way to let go of our own guilt and to help us forgive others who have done things that were harmful to us.
The Buddha warns us not to get attached to signs. This means we should not rely on words, forms, thoughts, concepts, or ideas of how things should be. It is more important to see how things actually are. It is useful to recall that things are always more complex than they look on the surface; and it is important to realize that things that sometimes appear to be enduring and separate are actually impermanent and interconnected.
Let’s examine the effects of interconnection. For example, many of us have some guilt about things we did in the past that we would have liked to do differently. Maybe we said the wrong thing to someone and they have not spoken to us since. Or perhaps we did something hurtful and it’s too late to go back and fix it. In cases like this, it is sometimes helpful to look deeply at all the causes and conditions that led up to what we did. If we examine carefully we will probably find that we are not 100% to blame. Some of the causes and conditions that created the event may have been beyond our control. So it becomes a little easier to have compassion for ourselves, and to forgive ourselves.
When we observe how this applies to us, we can start to see how it applies to others as well. When we learn how to forgive ourselves, it becomes easier to forgive others. We can begin to imagine some of the difficulties in their lives that may have led them to act in certain ways. Maybe they were having a bad day, or perhaps they had something going on in their lives that we were not aware of. There is a wonderful YouTube video about this called “Got Service”…
(describe)
We can also bring the effects of impermanence into our thinking to help us realize that although someone harmed us, they can still change and do things differently next time. So we are less likely to think of someone as a “bad person”, and more likely to think of them as someone who was having a bad day. We will recognize that situations and people can change, and that change includes positive aspects, like potential for growth and freedom of action.
To these insights, we can add the understanding of no-self or non-self, to help us detach from the little I, me, mine; and observe that the ego is not something that we constantly have to defend and promote. There can be a tremendous amount of freedom in this realization that we don’t have to constantly worry about what happens to the ego self. “Self” is just an idea, because things are always changing anyway. We eventually realize that all we have to worry about is what’s happening right now, this moment, because that’s all we ever really have for sure.
The prajna wisdom teachings on emptiness include the understanding of impermanence, inter-being, and no-self. Taken together they help us to realize a greater freedom in our relationships with others. Inter-being can help us to forgive ourselves and others when we fail to live up to our goals and expectations. Impermanence tells us that we can change. And No-self reminds us to be less selfish in our relationships with others.
In the case of the Zen scandal, when we apply the idea of interbeing, we can see that there may have been many causes and conditions for the Teacher’s behaviors. This does not mean that we condone their actions. It simply helps us to understand why the events may have happened and helps us to forgive, and then take measures to see that these events are less likely to happen again. We can look at the cultural context, the sangha environment, the people involved, their histories and personalities, and so on, before we rush to make a judgment. This lets us step back a little from immediately blaming someone 100% for what happened.
Knowing there is impermanence, we can see that people can change and we can work to support everyone involved so that they can heal and make positive changes.
Recalling no-self creates the freedom to place ourselves in the role of the other people involved and try to see things from their perspective.
The Zen ethics violations are an example of how we might use the Buddha’s teachings to combine wisdom and compassion. There are many smaller examples that occur every day in our own lives. These might include putting others first, volunteering to do some chores or help someone else, forgiving our own mistakes (both large and small) and being more considerate and less judgmental toward others.
Subhuti asked how a bodhisattva should act and think. The Buddha taught him that a Bodhisattva acts with wisdom and compassion. He illustrated this with the example of generosity. Then he taught about the emptiness of form.
Subhuti learned from his dialogue with the Buddha that a bodhisattva acts to save all beings, without thinking of any beings that are saved. He learned that a bodhisattva acts compassionately without attachment or selfishness.
We will frequently encounter opportunities to apply prajna wisdom teachings of inter-being, impermanence, and no-self in our own lives.
The next time you need to let go of guilt or you find yourself judging someone, try asking yourself how inter-being, impermanence and no-self can help you let go of judgment and offer compassion and forgiveness to yourself and others with ease and generosity.
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