Compassion for Delusions

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of a talk I offered to Morning Star Zen Sangha on January 3, 2018.

In the last meditation period, I was reflecting a little bit on what I was going to talk about, and I thought I would call this talk, “compassion for delusions.” I love that beautiful poem called, “The Ship of Compassion,” by Miaoshi, from a book called Zen Women. She writes, “Words are inherently empty, and yet still I am fond of brush and ink. My mind like ashes after the fire, and yet still I am tied to the world.” There is a kind of samadhi, the cessation of dualistic notions, that we can practice, and yet still I am fond of brush and ink, fond of words and language and thoughts that come. Still I am tied to this world. Still I find myself caring about things. I'm not the stereotypical hermit Zen monk, but a priest who commits to the bodhisattva vow to help heal this suffering world. 

And really, these "two" orientations toward samadhi and saving all beings are not contradictory. For me this practice of sitting is really one of integration, so I have a story I want to read to you. I mentioned before that I was reading this book called Thousand Peaks about Koreans Zen which is one of the tributary streams of our of our Boundless Way Zen lineage. I received transmission from David Rynick who received transmission from George Bowman who received transmission from Seung Sahn. Seung Sahn generously shared his Korean tradition in the United States. So I found myself quite curious, since this is one of the streams of our lineage, to learn more about this Korean heritage, and one does find a slightly different emphasis, or I should say a little bit more of a willingness to acknowledge a samadhi practice that we don't talk too much about in Boundless Way Zen. 

Samadhi is a practice that we fall into. One might deeply unify with the sensation of the breath till even the breath falls away. One might open beyond all thought and unify with the vastness. But there are shadows to cultivating a samadhi practice. One of the shadows is that we can get very attached to ideas of samadhi, and our attachment makes us suffer. Any experience that is different from our idea of samadhi may feel unsatisfying, but life is always changing. We can become more concerned with our own mental state than with everyone's well-being. We become "state-chasers," consumed with desire for our next "fix." We may lose touch with compassion, and our practice can become selfish and cold. 

There’s a wonderful koan in which Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, cannot awaken a woman from a deep, deep samadhi. Buddha’s and bodhisattvas are called to help, and none of them can awaken her. They have to get the bodhisattva of delusive wisdom, who resides in a hell realm, to come snap her out of samadhi to engage her in life again. So we actually need our delusions, we need our thoughts, to exist and take action in this world. Otherwise, we would starve. And we would abandon those we love. 

So for me, practice is about integration. Here's a story that I think helps illustrate this this kind of practice where we can both cultivate some capacity with prajna, with the sword of wisdom that recognizes delusion as delusion, but also that does not abandon the heart of compassion, the heart of care. There's a story of a teacher in the Korean lineage named Won Hyo (from the book Dropping Ashes on the Buddha). One evening as Won Hyo was crossing the desert, he stopped at a small patch of green where there were few trees and some water and went to sleep. Toward midnight he awoke thirsty. It was pitch dark. He groped along on all fours searching for water. At last his hand touched a cup on the ground. He picked it up and drank. Ah, how delicious. Then he bowed deeply in gratitude to Buddha for the gift of water. The next morning when Won Hyo woke, he saw beside him what he had taken for a cup during the night. It was a shattered skull, blood-caked and with shreds of flesh still stuck to the cheekbones. Strange insects crawled or floated on the surface of the filthy rain water inside it. Won Hyo looked at the skull and felt a great wave of nausea. He opened his mouth. As soon as the vomit poured out, his mind opened and he understood. Last night, since he hadn't seen and hadn't thought, the water was delicious. This morning, seeing and thinking had made him vomit. Ah, he said to himself, thinking makes good and bad, life and death. Without thinking, there is no Universe, no Buddha, no dharma. All is one, and this one is empty. There was no need now to find a master. Wan Hyo already understood life and death. What more was there to learn. So he turned and started back across the desert to Korea." 

He was on his way to China to find a great teacher and instead he found a skull. And the skull taught him about thinking. So this is no small insight that Won Hyo had here. What follows it is a kind of arrogance, a sense of “now I've got it all figured out,” and he doesn't at all! But he has had a taste of awakening. He suddenly recognized thoughts as thoughts rather than seeing them as the nature of reality in and of itself. Life and death simply as ideas, good and bad, right and wrong, our most dearly held delusions, he saw them simply as thoughts. This was profoundly liberating. 

You have probably had this experience before. There is great power in seeing mind states as mind states, in seeing thoughts as thoughts. Sometimes just naming them is enough. It's a skillful means. 

The other day I was feeling ashamed about something that's happening in my family life related to my son, a parenting issue, and I felt like a horrible father. I got on my phone between classes and I texted a good friend and I said, "I am so ashamed right now." So powerful to simply name what has arisen as a mind state and recognize it as a mind state. There is a kind of liberation in that. 

It's hard to describe but when you’re sitting on the cushion and you can do nothing about it, sometimes when you recognize a mind-state as a mind-state, you realize that it's not reality. It's something that is arisen as a set of thoughts and feelings that have taken possession of the heart-mind, that have created a kind of small world for us. Sometimes naming that is enough. It just begins to evolve. Just noticing, just paying attention, everything goes its own way. Everything is intrinsically impermanent, empty, without fixed nature, and everything exists in the fabric of the whole universe. When we name these claustrophobic mind states, sometimes they just open up and we see, this is a mind-state. Sometimes they evaporate, like what happened here to our ancestor Won Hyo. The mind-state utterly evaporated. Great clarity! Suddenly, pure presence, the skull neither good or bad, just the sound of water. 

This is the liberating truth that he woke to in that moment, the falling away of mind and body, the falling away of differentiation, the falling away of good and bad. A kind of existence before thought. 

Now to get stuck to this mind state of "beyond good and bad" is just another mind state. It’s a hell-cave. Like for the woman stuck in samadhi, nothing can happen from this place. We are of no service to the world. It is of course quite compelling. There is a part of me that has the stereotypical mountain monk in him, the hermit, the one who wants to go find a cave in the mountains just like so many of these teachers, to go tuck myself away and practice in nature, no more worrying about the struggles of society. This is the recluse, the practice of the arhat, where practice is not concerned with saving all beings or with engaging in the world but simply concerned with one's own personal salvation.

Awakening to the true nature of reality is a kind of liberation. When we taste it we feel that freedom. We may find ourselves feeling somewhat attached to it and abandon the search for a teacher, abandon care about the suffering in the world as we simply want to give it up. 

But our ancestral teacher goes on. After his return to Sila, Won Hyo’s activities became more and more unorthodox, and the following encounter happened. “There was a very famous monk in Sila, a little old man with a wisp of beard and skin like a crumpled paper bag. Barefoot and in tattered clothes, he walks through the town ringing his bell, calling ‘dae on, dae on, dae, on.’”  It means great peace and happens to be David Rynick’s given Buddhist name. “‘Dee on, don't think. Dea on, like this. Dae on, rest mind. Dae on, dae on,’ he called. Won Hyo heard of him and one day hiked to the mountain cave where the monk lived. From a distance he could hear the sound of extraordinary lovely chanting echoing through the valleys, but when he arrived at the cave he found the master sitting beside a dead fawn weeping. Won Hyo was dumbfounded. How could an enlightened being be either happy or sad since in the state of Nirvana there is nothing to be happy or sad about and no one to be happy or sad? He stood speechless for a while and then asked the master why he was weeping. The master explained, he had come upon the fawn after its mother had been killed by hunters. It was very hungry, so he had gone into town to beg for milk since he knew that no one would give milk for an animal. He said it was for his son. ‘A monk with a son? What a dirty old man,’ people thought, but someone gave him a little milk. He had continued this way for a month begging enough to keep the animal alive, then the scandal became too great and no one would help. He had been wandering for 3 days now in search of milk. At last he had found some, but when he returned to his cave the fawn was already dead. ‘You don't understand,’ said the master. ‘My mind and the fawn’s mind are the same. It was very hungry. I want milk. I want milk. Now it is dead. Its mind is my mind. That is why I am weeping. I want milk.’ Won Hyo began to understand how great a bodhisattva the master was. When all creatures were happy, he was happy. When all creatures were sad, he was sad. Wan Hyo said to him, ‘please teach me.'"

I find that to be a very moving story. Won Hyo was open enough to see this great compassionate, awakened heart, a manifestation of non-duality. He saw that love and care and the suffering that accompany them are manifestations of the Dharma, manifestations of non-duality, manifestations of emptiness. Even this mountain monk was filled with love and care. 

So actually, in my view, this represents an integration of samadhi with the heart of compassion. It is actually a ripening of samadhi, samadhi without bounds, samadhi without limits, not simply the samadhi of attachment to peacefulness, but the samadhi of oneness with all beings, the samadhi of interwovenness with this world! We are this world. And this is true whether we are thinking or not. So there is no need to get rid of thoughts. Just wake up! 

We do not exist separately. Our hearts and minds are literally made of this world. Sometimes “what is” manifests as peace: dae on. Sometimes “what is” manifests as great sorrow, as great care, as great delusion. Our practice is not to attain a particular state of mind and reside in it permanently. Our practice is to keep turning toward whatever is. 

When we have moments of great peace, we can appreciate and celebrate the vastness, the great emptiness of our being. Sometimes what appears to us is a starving fawn, great love, and great sadness, and in these moments, this too is the presence of emptiness, of non-duality, of awakening, of our interwoven nature, impermanent and yet manifesting. 

Our job is not to find any fixed mind-state but to continue turning toward whatever is with an open heart. In this way we will find ourselves sometimes called to a practice of silence and peace. Sometimes we need that peace. We need to find a places in our lives where we can recover our strength, be in touch with that part of ourselves that is just nurtured and fed by the simple presence of the sound of heat pulsing through a building, to just receive those moments when they come with great gratitude.

And sometimes the world needs us. It needs us to give back. Nurtured from our practice, called by the world, we get off the cushion and go begging, begging for milk. Whatever little thing we can do.