Full-Moon Mind

Master Ummon, founder of one of the five houses of Zen, said to his assembled students, “I don’t ask you about the days before the fifteenth of the month. What about after the fifteenth? Say something about those days.” As he often did, he answered his own question: “Every day is a good day.”

In the lunar calendar, the fifteenth of the month refers to the full moon, which represents the awakened mind. Ummon wasn’t asking about the days before realization. His “every day is a good day” was not dependent upon circumstances and conditions.

When we feel stuck in the days “before the fifteenth,” no matter what the calendar reads, we may experience a high degree of irritability and reactivity. Caught up in fear and loathing, distraction and withdrawal, craving and misery, it’s hard to feel that every day is a good day, especially when every day brings news of dreadful suffering.

We may think that if our practice were correct, we wouldn’t have those negative emotions. But what is correct practice? It is not to avoid or run from such feelings but to be aware of them, to be softened by them. Acknowledging them without being controlled by them is a very different experience. When we become aware of the irritation that’s lurking just beneath the surface, it’s less likely that it’s going to jump out and bash somebody in the head. We can see that the real form of that irritation is empty. It has no inherent reality, no unchanging substance. Realizing this, we can receive the teachings of every day just as they are, not as what we think they should be, and gratitude wells up naturally.

This morning a 90-year-old student said to me, “Having lived all these years, I see there’s really nothing to strive for. I just pay homage to things as they are.”

In his verse “Bodhisattva’s Vow,” Torei Enji, Zen monk and calligrapher, wrote:

When I, a student of Dharma,
Look at the real form of the universe,
All is the never-failing manifestation
Of the mysterious truth of Tathagata
[Buddha].

Using what Pema Chödrön calls “compassionate inquiry,” we can look into everything this way. We can note when we’ve been hooked, and observe the storylines we’ve created around our circumstances. In her book Taking the Leap, she writes that her teacher, Chögyam Trungpa Rimpoche, spoke of practice as just being completely present. “It was not, as he put it, ‘a vacation from irritation.’”

If we are completely present to whatever is arising, we can stretch beyond our self-imposed limits; we can endure what may seem unendurable.

If we are completely present to whatever is arising, we can stretch beyond our self-imposed limits; we can endure what may seem unendurable. This is our vow, after all—to be here for it, as it is now, whether or not we approve of it. Who really follows our dictates, anyway!

Most of us know the expression “the finger pointing at the moon.” We often take the finger for the moon, conceptualizing about enlightenment based on reading or hearing about someone else’s experience. How do we realize full-moon mind for ourselves? We can begin by turning off the computer, muzzling the phone, shutting the book, sitting quietly in silence. We attend to nothing but each exhalation. Thoughts come, emotions come. We return to the breath again and again, not getting lost in the highways and byways of evaluation and judgment. We just drop it, drop it. And then? The silver light comes shining. We are the moon.

We have been given this precious human birth so that we can experience this, so that we can live our bodhisattva vow. Trungpa Rimpoche said:

Taking the bodhisattva vow implies that instead of holding our own individual territory and defending it tooth and nail, we become open to the world that we are living in. It means we are willing to take on greater responsibility, immense responsibility. In fact, it means taking a big chance. But taking such a chance is not false heroism or personal eccentricity. It is a chance that has been taken in the past by millions of bodhisattvas, enlightened ones, and great teachers. So a tradition of responsibility and openness has been handed down from generation to generation, and now we too are participating in the sanity and dignity of this tradition. 

Becoming open to the world, we are participating in all of it, with nothing lacking and nothing superfluous. We’re in time out of time—you know the saying, there’s no time like the present? What Ummon is calling us to experience is, there’s no time in the present. No fifteen days before, no fifteen days after. Before, after, what? The open, attentive mind, the mind of radical acceptance and responsibility excludes no one, no situation—it’s an embrace that comes from the realization of our utter unity.

But this unity is not a place. There’s no blissful realm to which we adhere, no fixed point at which we can say this is the fifteenth—this is the present. When we try to capture that present mind, where is it? When is Now? Already gone! As the Diamond Sutra reminds us, “Past mind cannot be recalled; present mind cannot be held; future mind cannot be grasped.”

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So what about the days after the fifteenth? Experiencing the radical present doesn’t mean detaching from what comes next. It doesn’t confer oblivion. The bubble of self-absorption, of complacency, of apathy has been pierced. Now it’s up to us to take responsibility, to take a big chance, to respond with courage, with compassionate discernment.

Experiencing the radical present doesn’t mean detaching from what comes next.

These days after the fifteenth are a moment-by-moment actualization of our bodhisattva vow. When we vow to liberate all beings, we are simultaneously realizing interdependence. There are no “others” to save. The refugee, the immigrant, the addict, the person of ill will—they are us. So are those whose values and political views differ from ours. Seeing them as separate, undeserving of our care and concern, perpetuates everyone’s suffering.

So we sit, with dedication and consistency, “with faith and understanding,” as the Diamond Sutra says, not pondering whether or not we want to do it, or can take the time to do it. We just do it.

When we practice sincerely this way, it’s not a matter of successful zazen or effective zazen; dropping such unnecessary self-evaluation, each sitting has an unlimited ripple effect. The simple repetition of that which is unrepeatable allows us to respond from the hara (lower belly), from the heart, with trust. There’s no formula! Each situation demands complete awareness, the clear mirror mind that is free from prior convictions and karmic patterns. Thus, we can discern right action. As Rinzai told his teacher, “When I get there, I’ll know what to do.”

When we become intimate with “the real form of the universe,” when we experience the full moon of who we truly are, how it truly is—then what wells up? A motivation and resolve greater than any we’ve ever experienced before. And we just take care of business.

Coming from this intimacy, we can have the courage to resist oppression and injustice in ways that unite rather than divide us. “May we completely realize and actualize the Tathagata’s teaching,” we recite in “Opening This Dharma.” This is our prayer; this is our vow; this is our pledge: to realize and actualize our full-moon mind, thought by thought, breath by breath, day by day, every day.

♦

Adapted from a teisho delivered at Dai Bosatsu Zendo in 2017.