"The Invisible Boundary of Self"

When the amoeba see something good, it opens its membrane and envelops it. When something unpleasant comes along, the membrane closes. Are we any different--more evolved that a single-celled organism? Robert Koho Epstein gives us the Dharma talk from One Mind Zen on March 31, 2021.

"The Jewel in the Hem"

In tonight's talk at One Mind Zen, Ron​ Kisen Stevenson talks about conditioned responses, un-conditioning them, and appreciating the time-being. That's when the jewel of our True Nature is revealed to have been with us all along.

The Vomit of Insight - Guest blog by Rev. Mike Jinji Sunya Wood

Roughly thirteen hundred years ago, one Zen master showed us, through his vomit, how we create—and can overcome—birth and death. This is a rather extreme example of insight, yet Wonhyo, one of the great iconoclasts in Buddhist history, used this common experience we all share— as the spark for his awakening. That his story has made it to us today further shows its relevance, though it probably has also lasted due to its seemingly perverse nature. As with many Buddhist stories, though, the point is not whether or not the events actually took place, but with its message.

 In Korea, Wonhyo (617-666) was on his way to China, in the hopes of finding a master who would teach him Buddhism. While on his long walk, he became thirsty, but kept walking. By nightfall he was becoming dehydrated, and retreated into a cave. By luck, he found inside a bowl filled with water. He drank greedily and fell asleep. The next morning, in the light of day, he realized in quick succession that the cave was a tomb, the bowl was a skull, and the water inside it was fetid and filled with maggots. He threw up violently, at which point he was enlightened and saw no need to continue on to China.

A lesson that can be learned here is that we create the good and bad of a situation through our biases, knee-jerk reactions, and conventional understanding. Yet the lesson is also that any situation is a moment to realize liberation, and any challenging moment can be endured without making it any more dire or rosy than it ought. We can realize that we are already liberated by meeting any situation head-on, like Wonhyo, who in his disgust realized that it was only his perspective that caused him pain. Not that drinking maggot, gristle stew out of a skull is recommended—but the night before it had been some of the best water he ever drank. The primacy of personal experience and choice is clear.

The mind is a terrible thing to listen to, a wild jackass of fragments of memory, experience, lies, fears, hopes, dreams, songs, TV shows; we’ve talked to ourselves for long that we’ve churned all that mess into a semi-coherent narrative that we come to believe is true. This jackass becomes a thief, taking you away from a real experience of life with its powerful and seductive judgments and resemblance to a linear factual assessment of who you are.

We can use even the most harsh, sick, disgusting moments of our lives as vehicles for awakening, for breaking the spell of that inner tele-novella . As we can become aware that negative actions and thoughts are just energy, powerful energy that can in turn be redirected for beneficial use, we can also see times of illness or stress as times when there is useful energy present. All of life is our practice: if we are sick, we practice experiencing our sickness, without judgment; likewise with despair, rejection, insult, etc. This does not mean trying to convince ourselves that we don’t feel like shit, or that we are not afraid or grief-stricken. There are times when listening to what our minds are telling us about our bodies is critical to maintaining good health.

 It does mean realizing that, if any moment, this moment, is the moment to wake up, and if this is moment of discomfort, so be it. Wonhyo experienced through nausea—and its insight into life and death—an enlightenment moment. Literally puking out ignorance and fear, and realizing that discomfort and fear can be good news for practice, and sharp insight into the ephemeral nature of our emotions. He might have mentioned the hazards of laughing while vomiting, but we nevertheless  can be grateful to Wonhyo for his being able to carry this lesson onto the Bodhisattva path and pass on that insight for the benefit of others.

Though Wonhyo could be ambivalent about the necessity of a teacher in one’s awakening, he was a teachers, albeit of the primacy of individual experience. No one can puke out my illness for me; a good teacher, though, like these sages, could point out my sickness for you, and hold the bucket while I vomit out some more of my ignorance.

 

 

 

 

 

"I Am Not In Control"

Forms, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness...Avalokiteshvara tells us they're all characterized by emptiness. Sometimes the emotions run high, and it takes some effort to return to the still point, especially after one Zoom meeting too many. Jonson Sunmin Miller's Dharma talk from One Mind Zen on March 17, 2021.

"It's Not Pie"

It's not like there's a finite amount of generosity to go around. Generosity requires a willing giver and a willing recipient. Accepting generosity doesn't diminish either party. In the perfection of generosity there is no other party. Eunsahn Citta gives the Dharma talk March 10, 2021 at One Mind Zen Hermitage.

"The Bondage of the Blue Screen"

You're the writer, director, actor, special effects technician, and even the reviewer of that film you call "me." 

Malintha​ Hwamin Perera gives the Dharma talk at One Mind Zen March 3, 2021. 

Two Raw Vimalakirtis

By Rev. Mike Jinji Sunya

Much like Vimalakirti, the sly layman of the eponymous sutra, we often meet people who challenge us with their pain, shake us out of our stupor by the mere fact of their presence or, rather, the jarring presence of their suffering. Vimalakirti’s illness was Upaya, skillful means for instructing even some of the great Bodhisattvas in the uncomfortable face of suffering, the true cost of compassion.

So this means too that one of the basic points of the sutra is that though ultimately there is no sickness, in this realm of form, and that sickness can be useful not only as a tool for awakening, but as a means to helps others wake up, it is also real, and acute, and a cruel teacher. To learn compassion, or inspire compassion in others, then, is to recognize both the form and emptiness of pain.

Much like the short Pali teaching The Monk with Dysentery, illness becomes the sharpest of blades, challenging our compassion, our vows, the true cost of the Bodhisattva vow to save all beings. Illness reminds us that practice has to include the dirty work.

Two friends of mine died, years apart an under drastically different circumstances, but their teachings have become, for me, inspiration for living my vow and constant challenges to any bullshit or pride inherent in my practice.

Roger was a resident of the nursing home where I was to do my practical portion of CNA training. My (and my partner’s) duties for him included the most feared of tasks for the trainees: He had an colostomy bag, which had to be emptied and replaced as part of washing him and getting him ready for bed. Once we got him undressed and in the shower, we saw clearly that no one had changed his bag in some time; it was full. I jumped right in and volunteered to the one to change him. I barely touched the bag when it popped loose from his side, and shit therein was now all over me, over him, over my partner. I was also face-face with the open stoma, which was oozing more shit.

Shari Faye Smith was a friend I only met once, on an episode of Forensic Files. She had been abducted by a serial killer who taunted her family by phone once she was in his clutches. Before he was to torture and kill her in the most unspeakable ways, he made her write out a last will.  Fully aware that she was going to die not soon after writing it, fully aware of the horror and pain she about to endure, she spent her last few clear-headed moments to show compassion to her parents, and to meet her fate with a steely grace that goes to the marrow of the bodhisattva vow:

I love you Mommy, Daddy, Robert, Dawn & Richard (her boyfriend) and everyone else and all other friends and relatives. I’ll be with my Father now, so please, please don’t worry. Just remember my witty personality & great special times we all shared together. Please don’t even let this ruin your lives, just keep living one day at a time for Jesus. Some good will come out of this. My thoughts will always be with you & in you. Casket closed. (Emphasis mine.-mw.)

Mom, Dad, Robert & Dawn, there’s so much I want to say that I should have said before now. I love y’all! I know ya’ll love me and will miss me very much, but if ya’ll stick together like we always did – ya’ll can do it! Please do not become hard or upset. “Every thing works out for the good of those that love the Lord” (Romans 8:28).

She had just turned 18.

While she derived her strength and resolve from a faith source we may or may not share, the lesson of the power of pain to speed up a realization of, access to, the marrow of practice is clear. Shari Faye Smith embodied Great Faith, Great Doubt and Great Effort as resolutely as any Patriarch.

In Vimalakirti’s little room, the great radiant Bodhisattvas of the 10,000 Realms had no answer to his bringing them face-to-face with simple sickness and death. Of course, there was really nothing in the room at all, illness being ultimately empty as is all form. So that form was empty, but in the moment experienced was a hammer to the face of ignorance, to the dreams of bliss and mastery.

My friends the old man, the teenage girl, and all teachers and bodies (including my own), remind me that the dharma gates we sometimes enter in order to help all beings are doors to sickness, to shit, to incredible pain, to a lost cause, all icy-hot challenges to our own vows, our own Great Faith, Great Doubt, and Great Effort.

What in your life or your practice helps you run toward the dirty work?

What pain do you avoid or turn away from, because it isn’t comfortable or is too painful to embrace?

My answers to that last question include abused animals/images of factory farming, aggressive mental illness, hungry kids; I’m sure that behind the many other doors that need to be opened by me, are suffering beings for whom my tears, self-doubt, squeamishness and pity are not welcome and shown to be hollow.

How can we possibly live our vows? How do I come to embrace the dire needs that are always present? Advancing toward the light is the same in emptiness and form, in contingent and Ultimate realms as shit, and blood, and helpless, raw suffering. How does all that simple yet kinda esoteric idea play out in the mud of your daily life? By getting as close as you can to it, eyes wide open, and become what the moment needs.