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Guided Meditation: This Very Mind is Buddha

Good morning, everyone. We've had a very exciting time trying to welcome you this morning, so I'm sorry we're going to be a little short on our meditation. I'll be having us basically sit for about seven minutes. I just want to ask you all to find a comfortable place for your body.

I think most of you are familiar with the program that we're doing for these three weeks. There's an intensive with Gil Fronsdal, myself, and Paul Haller that we've called The Harmony of Zen and Vipassana. During this week, we've been taking turns talking about the different elements of our practice, how they differ, and how they're the same. The roots are shared; it all starts with the Buddha's enlightened vision under the tree. As Dharma comrades, we've really enjoyed looking at the different elements. The first week we looked at samadhi^[1] practices, meditation. The second week we looked at prajna^[2] wisdom practices. And this week we're looking at sila^[3], or the practices of right conduct.

When the Buddha was sitting under the tree, he was really giving us this visible instruction of how to meet our life, literally face-to-face, and how to meet the myriad things that are continuously coming forth to greet us—like we had this morning with all these electronic efforts to come together. Right posture expresses not only our integrity and our dignity, but in the best of moments, our kindness and our innate curiosity about the world around us.

So, like the Buddha under the tree, we sit on the ground, whether it's on a cushion, on the grass, or in a chair, and we find a stable position for our lower body, as I hope you've already done this morning. Then we lengthen the spine from the base, slowly extending upward to the head, balancing your head on top of your shoulders, relaxing the neck, softening your eyes, and then inviting whatever tension there is in your body to flow back downward. Let it flow back down into the earth from which we came so very, very, very long ago.

Finding your seat is a very long and intimate process. As one monk said after years of sitting, "The greatest pilgrimage of my life has been my body." So take the time you need to explore all the parts of your body: lengthening the torso, opening your chest, relaxing your belly, and then let your skin hang loose. I was thinking about that this morning, kind of like a soft silk dress on a hanger in a dark closet.

Take two deep breaths, fully inhaling through your mouth, and follow the flow of the air as it enters your body. Feel that cool air, and how it becomes warm as it goes out again. Do this a couple of times: deep inhalation through the mouth, filling the belly, the chest, and then slowly exhaling.

After that, we just breathe naturally. If it helps you to concentrate, you can count your breaths on the inhalation, on the impulse to inhale, which I locate myself in my abdomen. On the impulse to breathe, count one. On the next impulse to inhale, two, and so on to ten. And then from there, back to one. You know, it's not always so easy to do this. It takes some time, some practice, to get to ten. So without discouraging yourself or thinking you're doing it wrong, just start over at one whenever you notice you've gone off into dreams. Dreams of the past, plans for the future—just come on back to your body. Your wonderful body, which is always in the present. It's a great thing about our bodies: they are always right here, right now, like a good dog waiting for us to return.

I wanted to read you a little portion of a poem written by a Chinese Zen master who founded our school, Soto Zen. His name is Dongshan^[4], and in Japanese, Tozan Ryokai. The poem he wrote about meditation, about life, about awakening is called the Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi^[5].

The teaching of vastness has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors; So keep it well. Filling a silver bowl with snow, hiding a heron in the moonlight. Taken as similar, they are not the same; when you mix them, you know where they are. The meaning is not in the words, yet it responds to the inquiring impulse. Move and you are trapped, miss and you fall into doubt and vacillation. Turning away and touching are both wrong, for it is like a massive fire. Just to depict it in literary form is to stain it with defilement. It is bright just at midnight; it doesn't appear at dawn. It acts as a guide for beings; its use removes all pains. Although it is not fabricated, it is not without speech. It is like facing a jewel mirror; form and image behold each other. You are not it, in truth it is you.

[Silence]

I'm so sorry we didn't have longer to sit together this morning, but I hope you'll find time later today or this evening to sit a little bit yourselves.

Taking Refuge in the Three Treasures

Good morning again. For those of you who might just be tuning in, I'm Fu Schroeder, I'm the abbess at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin County, California. As I mentioned, we are in the middle, or toward the end actually, of what's been a wonderful three-week intensive with Gil Fronsdal, myself, and Paul Haller, also from the Zen Center.

We've been offering these perspectives from our two traditions, Vipassana and Zen, on many things. What's different and what's the same about our meditation, about our wisdom teachings, and also about right conduct, which is what we're focusing on this week.

I've been discussing in this morning session the sixteen Bodhisattva precepts. Yesterday I talked about the practice of confession and repentance, which is preliminary to receiving the precepts, acknowledging, "Oh yeah, I did that. I did that, and I really don't want to do that anymore." Really knowing within our own hearts what things we've done that we would really like to change, and how to do that. The precepts are one of the guidance systems for making changes that we'd like to make in our lives.

The first of the three Bodhisattva precepts are called the refuges, the three refuges. Refuges are taken in what's called the Triple Treasure: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha community.

I want to begin with a koan from the Book of Serenity^[6], which is a collection of teaching stories that started to be gathered together right about the time that Zen arrived in China over thirteen hundred years ago. This one is called "The World Honored One Points to the Ground." The World Honored One is the Buddha.

As soon as a single mote of dust arises, the whole earth is contained therein. With a single horse and a single lance, the land is extended. Who is this person who can be master in any place and meet the source in everything?

So here's the story:

As the World Honored One, the Buddha, was walking with a congregation, he pointed to the ground with his finger and said, "This spot is good to build a sanctuary." Indra, the emperor of the gods, took a blade of grass, stuck it in the ground, and said, "The sanctuary is built." The World Honored One smiled.

For me, it's the Buddha's smile that has carried this ancient tradition from its home in faraway India, over those thousands of miles and hundreds of centuries, in order to shine brightly on us here today. Taking refuge, building sanctuaries in the warmth of that smile, is the beginning of a well-marked path to our own well-being and happiness, and for the benefit of this terribly suffering world.

I take refuge in Buddha as the perfect teacher. I take refuge in Dharma as the perfect teaching. I take refuge in Sangha as the perfect life.

These are very powerful words that we chant just about every morning at the Zen Center. Although each of us may have this unique feeling about what these words mean, I think it's useful for us to look at words carefully and wonder about how they hit us deeply inside, and what role they play in our own understanding of Buddhist practice in our near-perfect lives.

Long, long ago, when the Buddha, the perfect teacher, had set in motion the wheel of the law, there was a moment in time where—or so I can imagine—there was a kind of near-perfect stillness. It was like when someone shouts into a canyon and then waits for that familiar voice to echo in reply, "Hello."

In the case of the Buddha, the response came from Kondañña^[7], meaning "the one who knows," declaring his understanding and requesting full admission as the Buddha's first disciple.

"Hello," Kondañña says. "I'm here. I hear you, Lord Buddha." And then he says to the Buddha, "I wish to go forth under the Blessed One and to receive the full admission." The Buddha replies, "Come. Your understanding of the Dharma is well proclaimed. Live the holy life for the complete end of suffering."

With that request, the Triple Treasure was manifest in this world. We have the Buddha, and the Dharma (the teaching), and now there's a Sangha. The giver, the receiver, and the gift. At that moment, as it says in the Pali Canon, the news traveled right up to the Brahma world, and this ten-thousand-fold world element shook and quaked and trembled, while a great measureless light surpassing the splendor of the gods appeared in the world.

This request by Kondañña to take refuge in the Buddha and the Dharma was in the form of a call and response, you know, like the echo in the valley. This is a very familiar form of dialogue that we practice both in the Zen and the Vipassana traditions right up to this very day. It's called by a number of names. Sometimes we call it question and answer, or practice discussion, or dokusan. Dokusan means a private consultation with a teacher.

Without the Buddha and his teachings, and without these people who came to study with him, there wouldn't be any Buddhism for us right now. There'd be no refuge, no blade of grass with which to build the sanctuary. Taking refuge in the Triple Treasure, as Suzuki Roshi said, is an act of adoration. By taking refuge, you adore the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.

Before declaring your adoration for the Triple Treasure, if you haven't already, it might be good to consider what each of these three treasures means to you now. First, there's the Buddha, a word that means "awake." When the Buddha was approached by a wanderer on the road shortly after his enlightenment, the wanderer said, "Are you a god?" The Buddha said, "No." "Are you a water spirit?" The Buddha said, "No." "Are you a demon?" "No." "Are you a human being?" The Buddha said, "No." Then the wanderer said, "Well, dear sir, what might you be?" And the Buddha said, "I am awake."

There are lots of things that can be said about the Buddha. In fact, we use this word all the time. We bow to images of the Buddha. We offer fragrance and sweet tea and flowers and food. We dress like him, we endeavor to act like him, and we spend a lot of time listening to the words of the Buddha and of his descendants. All of which sounds like adoration, at least the form of it.

One understanding that we in the Zen school have about what it means to take refuge in Buddha is to take refuge in who we really are. Who we really are is already Buddha, is already this quality: awake. The word "refuge" literally means to fly back. We fly back to our true self, our whole self, our limitless, ungraspable, and inconceivable existence. Therefore, it's not something that we can change. We can't produce it, we can't destroy it, and we can't bring it about by any kind of effort. There's nothing to add, and there's nothing to be taken away. As frustrating as that might be, it's something that no doubt we've all noticed about reality: it always wins.

The shortest term for that reality of who we really are in Zen is the word "thus." Thus, the Buddha is called the Thus Come One. Just like the body, always in the present. Or as Zen Master Dongshan said as he crossed a river and saw the reflection of his own face in the water. This was the moment of his awakening, and he was quite surprised. He said, "Just this person." As the Buddha showed to the assembly by holding up a flower: "Look, just this flower. Look, just this person, just this moment of awakening."

Being a Buddha, being awake, means being unattached to your ideas about who you are. Whether you think you are rotten or you think you are absolutely great, not grasping those thoughts is Buddha. Ironically, being a person who has such thoughts is a prerequisite for being Buddha, for awakening. Step number one: this very mind is Buddha. Step number two: no mind, no Buddha. In either case, imagining that you can run away from who you really are is simply a delusion. And what kind of delusion? It's the delusion of running away. Seeing that is an insight.

Returning to Buddha, returning to who we really are, including all of our delusions, is to take refuge in Buddha, in the truth of reality. The truth of our human life is not one and not two. It's true that sentient beings and Buddhas are not separate.

In his book Being Upright, Tenshin Anderson^[8] says this about taking refuge in Buddha: "Trusting that you're Buddha does not mean that you identify with being Buddha. It's not something special about you that makes you Buddha. It's simply you being you that is Buddha. And it's not that you're so virtuous that you're Buddha, but that you being you is virtue. To take refuge in Buddha means to give up running away from home. It means to recognize our responsibility to live in accord with our Buddhahood."

In other words, to assume you are Buddha, and now to act like it.

The second of the Triple Treasures is taking refuge in the Dharma, what the Buddha taught. Here's what he said to Ananda at the very time of his death, from the Pali Canon:

Ananda, you may think the word of the teacher is a thing of the past. Now you have no more teacher. But you should not regard it so. The Dharma and the discipline taught by me are your teacher after I'm gone. The law I have taught has no secret version. There is no teacher's closed fist about the good things here. Now I am old, Ananda. My years have turned eighty. Just as an old cart is made to carry on with the help of makeshifts, so too, it seems to me, the Blessed One's body is made to carry on with the help of makeshifts. So Ananda, each of you should make of yourself an island, with no other refuge. Each of you should make the law their island, and no other refuge, either now or when I'm gone. It is those, whoever they may be, who make themselves and the law their islands, and no other refuge, who will be the foremost among my disciples—of those, that is, who want to train. How could it be, Ananda, that what is born, come into being, formed, and bound to fall, should not fall? That is not possible.

Then the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus^[9] thus:

Indeed, bhikkhus, I declare this to you: It is in the nature of all formations to dissolve. Attain perfection through diligence.

This was the Perfect One's last utterance.

Part of our understanding of these teachings is that the Buddha was not the person, but the teaching itself, which has continued right up into this day. In this way, I think we're quite fortunate not to bear the problems of deification, although we do get carried away sometimes, especially here at Green Gulch with all the bells and whistles.

I think if we continue to appreciate that these statues and offerings that we're making in our homes and in our temples are truly gestures of gratitude being made by those of us alive today, the living Buddhists. Without that, there can't be any ancestors if we don't remember and honor them. And there can't be the teaching of the Buddha unless we, like the honey ants, carry it within our own bodies.

I don't know if you know about honey ants, but they're really amazing, which is why I think of them as a good metaphor for the work that we're also doing together in our temples. Honey ants have these abdomens that fill up with honey, and then the ants hang from the ceilings of their nests, serving as storage units for the benefit of their communities. For the same reason, the students of the Buddhist teaching have been called the vessels of the Dharma. The honey ants of the Dharma.

So what's the Dharma? Well, that's a good question with either a very long or a very short answer. In the Prajnaparamita literature, which is the basis for our Zen tradition—Prajnaparamita meaning "wisdom beyond wisdom"—there are two extreme examples that have been written. One version is a hundred thousand lines; it's a very large text. On the other end is the letter A. Basically, the Dharma is the truth, and it's really up to each of us to find the truth and to live within the circle of what our eye of practice can see.

And as for the Sangha, it is this very wide and wonderful community of friends who have been gathering in a world around to listen to the teachings of the gentle Buddhas, and those teachings being the greatest gift to us all.

Thank you for your kind attention this morning, and I hope you have a lovely day. Please take care of yourselves and stay safe.

Q&A

Kevin: Thank you, Fu. Did you want to take some time to take some questions?

Fu Nancy Schroeder: Sure, if anyone has a question, I'm happy to probably spend a few minutes. I don't know, Kevin, what the outer limits are, but I have a few minutes.

Kevin: Great. We'll take questions in chat if you want to put some questions in there, and I'll read them off to you, Fu. You can take as many as you want.

[Silence]

Fu Nancy Schroeder: Okay. "The echo down the canyon."

Kevin: Hi, Patricia. Yeah, well, we will be putting the video recording on YouTube, and we'll be looking into seeing if we can get a transcript available. So, Patricia also said that this was an amazing talk.

Fu Nancy Schroeder: Oh, thank you, Patricia. I'm glad you loved it.

Kevin: Michelle has a question. She says, "When we take the Buddha vows, do we need to be in the presence of someone appointed to be a witness?"

Fu Nancy Schroeder: Yeah, it's called "warm hand to warm hand" in our tradition, the way we practice those celebrations. Usually, you have a preceptor, someone who has received dharma transmission, meaning they have permission from their teacher to offer precepts. That's really the only thing you're granted by receiving dharma transmission: this authority to give others the precepts. That's a very intimate relationship that you have with someone you talk to as a mentor, as a teacher.

At some point, when you finish sewing your robes. We sew our own robes; I'm wearing one of them right now. It's called a rakusu^[10]. It's a miniature of the larger robes that I think you've all seen the monks wear—I have one of those too that we wear during meditation. We sew our robes; it's one of the traditions that we continue to practice at the Zen Center. It takes a while, which is good, and with each stitch you say, "I take refuge in Buddha." Thousands of stitches. It's fantastic practice. If you like to meditate, it's a great way to meditate with this cloth and thread, and usually sitting with other friends in silence.

Once you've finished your robes, then we schedule a ceremony. Often there's more than one person, usually quite a few, and it's a very beautiful ceremony. Families come, friends come, the community comes, and then we have a party after. Cookies and tea, that's our favorite party. So yes, it's quite an intimate part of our community life, receiving the precepts.

Thank you for that question. Do you want to take one more?

Kevin: Sure. Chris asks, "Can you give your interpretation of 'be an island unto yourself'?"

Fu Nancy Schroeder: Right away what comes to mind is a familiar teaching for me, like when the Buddha said, "I and all beings together enlightened at the same time." So the island unto yourself would be yourself as the entirety of existence, that you're a representative of all of it, right? All of us are representatives of the whole thing. We are the universe in this form.

So an island unto itself is kind of like the universe. It's a pretty big island, and then all of us are roommates. I came up with this image the other day. After meditation, you walk outside and it feels like this womb of light. You've just walked into the womb of light. As little babies we're born from our mother's belly, the dark, into this womb of light. Being alive in this world of light and color and amazement, sound... so, we're kind of roommates, that's what we all are. We're roommates. And that for me is the island. It's the great island, Jambudvipa^[11], it's called in Sanskrit. The center of the universe where we live. So that's the island.

Kevin: Okay, well, thank you everyone for coming. Thank you for joining us, Fu, and being flexible with our technical challenges we had today.

Fu Nancy Schroeder: Well, Kevin, thank you so much for all your effort, and I'll see you tomorrow morning.

Kevin: Yes, thank you everybody. See you tomorrow. Bye.