Here for It, as It Is Now

Exhaling with this sense of unimpeded giving. Receiving on the in breath, and giving it all away on the exhalation.

Letting go of all our ideas, all our expectations, all the ways in which we think we should be different from how we are right here, right now.

Deeply appreciating this dharma treasure and of things just as they are.

Homage To Things As They Are

I have a student who is 90 years old and has been through quite a lot. And she said:

Having lived all these years, I now realize that there is really nothing to strive for, and I can just pay homage to things as they are.

How we experience, this requires our letting go of any concepts we may be still holding on to. What Zazen is, what Buddhism is, who we are, our so-called identity and what we think should be better, or different. In the Heart Sutra we recite: 

With no hindrance in the mind. No hindrance, therefore, no fear.

I think it’s pretty common to find that when we look within there are all sorts of fears that we won’t be able to measure up, that things are going to get worse. And we truly do not trust in things as they are.

The Perfect Way

There is a wonderful verse that we often recite here, especially at sesshin, by Sōsan Kanchi Zenji, called Faith in Mind. And it starts:

The Perfect Way is not difficult.

Just avoid getting caught up in preferences. 

When you are free from aversion and craving, 

It reveals itself fully and without disguise.

So we often think, What is the perfect way, and why don’t I feel that I can be on it? Why am I so aware of everything that seems to get in the way? Why am I always getting in my own way? Maybe I am getting caught up in preferences. 

The Preferential Mind

This preferential mind is so frequently what we inhabit. To be free from aversion and craving means that in our zazen practice, we have to be able to see what we are running away from. Aversion. 

What do we feel we need? We’re not sufficient. Our surroundings need some kind of adjustment. And this, of course, if you really look at it, means that you are—a favorite expression of mine—the traffic cop of the universe. You’re saying, Now you go. No stop. Now you go, I don’t want you anymore. 

This feeling of having to control circumstances is an automatic invitation to suffering. When we hear “things as they are,” we may immediately go to “things as they should be.”

It’s natural to feel that way, especially in this time of climate crisis, war after war, increasing hunger, and all manner of disturbing situations. 

When you are free from aversion and craving, when you see these situations and instead of pushing them away or keeping them down below your awareness, somewhere where it won’t erupt and make you uncomfortable, instead of feeling that if you could only have such and such, and this person and that person in your life, that would be better. No. 

What is it to be free from aversion and craving in the midst of knowing what’s going on, in your own awareness, in your own karmic patterns that have taken over so strongly. What is it to be free from those patterns? 

And that’s really what we are doing, practicing meditation again and again. Seeing these things, not running away from them, but seeing them in their fundamental emptiness. 

Also in the Heart Sutra, it opens with the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara, doing deep prajnaparanita. In other words, engaging in the truth of this moment with nothing added and not trying to change anything or take anything away. 

Prajna, wisdom. Paramita, perfection. Engaging in deep prajnaparamita, clearly saw that the five skandhas are śūnyatā, fundamentally empty. 

The Five Skandhas

Our usual way of noting these five skandhas—which are: form, feeling, thought, volition and consciousness—are to attach to them. Attaching to them, we make them solid. We give them a substance that fundamentally they do not have. 

And by believing in the solidity of the forms, including our own so-called self, this self identity, this personality, this ego entity, by giving credence to the solidity of this we believe that nothing is changing. We forget that everything is impermanent, and that nothing has any unchanging intrinsic substance. Form.

Feeling. How about all these emotions that arise? The emotions that say, No, I don’t want this. Or that was such a terrible thing that happened. This attachment, this stickiness to the emotions is caused because we don’t believe that they are fundamentally empty. 

If you see the emotions as passing clouds rather than as a jail cell, it’s quite a different experience. You can simply feel how it is and not jump to the next formation, which is, This is the way it will always be. 

No. It’s already shifted, whether you know it or not. Form. Feeling. Accepting these feelings, these emotions, and seeing the great lessons they have for us, and realizing they are, as is often put in bodhisattvas vow, the avatars of Buddha. These very difficulties, these people we have decided are no good for us. 

That very way of refusing to allow the lessons that these difficult situations have, again causes us to hold on and believe in the unchanging substance of what is already moving on. Thought, forms continuing to come, and very sticky. What if we don’t believe our own thoughts? What if we just see them as the product of our karmic conditioning? What if we allow the thoughts to come, and allow them to go on the exhalation?

And feel that each thought itself can produce a Buddha. That in itself, changes everything. So instead of being stuck in this little bubble of misery, we can allow these thoughts that come to reveal something. Sōsan Zenji says It reveals itself fully. It. What is being revealed?

Each thought can lead us to this intuitive wisdom. We are fundamentally Buddhas. This is our true birthright. So not getting captured by these feelings and thoughts. Just seeing what they have to teach, and then letting them go, and more fully realizing our own treasure.

So form, feeling, thought, volition. How are we going to live? Isn’t this a question that brings us to this practice, what is my life for? 

Normally, volition is caught up with willfulness, right? I want. I need. All circling around what we think of as this unchanging, solid self. But what if volition becomes willingness instead of willfulness? 

Willingness, allowing our own fundamental wisdom to come forth. And this volition, when seen as a great teaching, allowing it, rather than trying to control it, becomes the source of our bodhisattva vow. Why we are here. This true being. 

And consciousness, the fifth skandha. Normally we think of it in terms of our sensations and the objects of our sensations. But what is it beyond what we have locked in in our ignorance? Consciousness. The mind. This freedom from aversion and craving.

A Tenth Of An Inch

Sōsan Zenji goes on:

A tenth of an inch’s difference,

And heaven and earth are set apart.

 When we fall back, as we usually do, into a belief in a separate selfhood, into a belief in our own thought forms and emotions as unchanging. This tenth of an inch is difference. 

Heaven and earth are set apart, but he continues in that quatrain: 

If you wish to see it before your own eyes,

Have no fixed thoughts, either for or against it. 

Things as they are when we don’t bring some fixed ideas about them, are indeed revealing themselves fully and without disguise. He goes on: 

To say, The Way is perfect, like vast space 

With nothing wanting, nothing superfluous. 

It is indeed due to picking and choosing 

That you lose sight of its suchness.

The way. When we are one with the way, this endless way of the Buddha’s teaching, we realize this is our home. We can return from whatever has taken us, taken our consciousness, taken our thoughts and feelings away from its wholeness. Wanting nothing. We may often feel I lack this, if only I could have that. But to see it from this perfect way, to realize our own perfection and realize how often we get in the way, as I said.

A wonderful Zen teacher, founder of Zen Center of San Francisco, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

 said: 

You are perfect, just as you are, but you could use some improvement. 

A Continual Purification

And so this is what we call practice, to really look into things. Be willing to experience everything that arises, not out of ignorance, not out of greed and anger, but to see that our practice is a continual purification. To see those things that cause us suffering, cause others suffering, are all swirling around the misunderstanding of a separate self.

We are interconnected. There is absolutely nothing that we can do that doesn’t affect everyone and everything. So our practice is a huge undertaking to understand the responsibility that comes with this human birth, this rare and precious human birth. And to see how that sense of responsibility brings with it–if we can continually return to this present mind–brings with it a real sense of resolve to be here in a way that does not harm but rather serves and embraces all life.

The Diamond Sutra gives us a good pointer. It says:

Develop a pure, lucid mind that alights on nothing whatsoever. 

In other words, it doesn’t fixate. It doesn’t say this is going to be the way it is forever. It means see it, a light on it as just this temporary moment of recognition. And it continues:

The mind should be kept independent of all thoughts that arise in it. If the mind depends on anything, it has no sure haven. 

No sure haven. This is when a tenth of an inch is difference. When you’re fixed in one way or another, heaven and Earth are set apart.

And we find in that being set apart all the dualities that cause suffering, to ourselves, to our loved ones, to the entire global family. 

There’s a wonderful statement in the Buddha’s words in the Dhammapada:

For those who know their lives will end soon, quarrels come to an end. 

And of course, we don’t have our expiration date. But soon. Some of us who are 80, some of us who are 90, some of us who are much younger, we don’t know. But if we live with this clear recognition of impermanence, then quarrels come to an end. Quarrels in our own minds, quarrels with others. 

And the most important thing that comes from this is that we can fully give ourselves to what is needed. Yes, we can say fundamentally, things as they are are perfect. But as Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said, there is something we need to do. 

There is some way in which we can participate in the healing of this planet. There are all sorts of calls to our Bodhisattva nature. And coming from this Bodhisattva clarity, I’ll quote the young monk Rinzai, when his teacher asked him, “when you get there, what will you do?” He said, 

When I get there, I’ll know what to do. 

This statement is coming from the clear mind, the perfect way is not difficult. We cannot imagine or project what we will need to do in the future, not even in this next moment.

But can we be here for it? Can we have the trust, the faith in mind. This is our practice. Continually returning to all sorts of karmic ways and habits, but seeing them because of our practice. Seeing them as they arise, not later on, after you’ve already reacted to something, but seeing them and then feeling this great motivation to purify, to clarify, so that your actions come from that wisdom of this cleared up mind.

True Spiritual Understanding

I want to end with something that my teacher told us. When he was a very young monk, he and his teacher agreed that he would be sent to the United States, to Hawaii to help out with the Zen group there. 

And soon after he got there, there was a gathering. And at this gathering there was an old Hawaiian shaman, so this young Zen monk who had just arrived recently felt he wanted to ask this elderly man, something of great importance, which is the question that all of us, I think, have when we come to study with a teacher, to practice with a sangha.

What is the most important thing in life?

Or another way to put it, is, what is the deep significance of a true spiritual understanding. This elderly man said to him:

There are four things. First, thank you. 

Thank you. No object, no person, just thank you. 

Second, I’m sorry. 

There is not one of us who has not caused harm in some way to others. 

Third, please forgive me. 

This is so important to be able to go to the person, even if that’s long ago and you cannot go directly in the present to have that feeling, please forgive me. This is truly to acknowledge it isn’t enough just to say I’m sorry.

And then fourth, I love you. 

This I love you wells up. 

We have all experienced this in our sitting. Deep sitting, seeing how wondrous this moment is. Feeling this deep gratitude. And seeing the ways in which we have not always been able to act skillfully and feeling sorry, truly. And then seeing the specific ways in which we have caused harm. And to each of these, please forgive me. And what comes naturally is this experience of love. 

I love you.