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Practice Meets Life

Good evening, welcome. I'd like to give a little talk about how practice meets life, meets our life. I gave a version of this talk at a retreat I just finished, so apologies to anybody who has already heard this before.

I'd like to start by saying there's a way in which we can practice with a real wish to follow the directions precisely, and make sure that we understand every single word and that we know exactly what's being pointed to. With a real direction and intentionality, and a real specificity about, "Okay, this is what the instructions are, this is what I'm going to do, and if I'm not clear about any part I'll go get some clarification." This often can have a certain amount of striving to it, with a sense of, "Okay, if I understand everything and practice in accordance with this, then something fantastic will happen." This is a great way to practice; it's a fantastic way to practice.

But there's also another way to practice that is also a great way to practice, and a fantastic way to practice, in a way that can really support the unfolding of our life, the unfolding of our Dharma practice. In a way that is just as fruitful, filled with benefit, or beautiful.

Before I talk about that, I'll say that I myself am actually quite inspired by, motivated by, or guided by something that the Buddha said right before his awakening. He described his mind and he used this word, "malleable." So it's flexible, can go this way or that way. I think of malleable as the opposite of brittle, the opposite of really stuck and needing things to be one particular way. Instead, with a feeling of being bendable, it can accommodate whatever is needed to be accommodated at that time, instead of a real grabbing onto and sticking to, "Well, the instructions are exactly this, I have to follow them."

So another way is, rather than having this kind of precision in the way that the mind is thinking about practice, a way that can be a little bit more diffuse—maybe I'll use this word—or softer. A way in which we're sensing our way, feeling our way, maybe a little bit more of an intuitive sense. We can interpret intuitive in a number of different ways, but I would say more of recognizing, "Okay, feeling like there's more freedom this direction but not that direction," and being tuned into that. Of course, this other way of feeling our way in requires a certain amount of not only tuning in to ourselves and what our experience is, but also trusting ourselves. Trusting that even if we do find ourselves growing a way that has less freedom, that we can find our way back, or find our way over, or find our way forward. Or maybe just find our way right exactly there where there's no more freedom and ease.

These are two different ways of practicing. Fantastic both of them, and we can see that the Buddha even taught both of these ways. In the suttas^[1], for example, we see these lists. Lots of lists of things that have a certain amount of precision, "first this and then that." A list of five things and they're always in the same order. As well as the meditation instructions, for those of you who are familiar with Satipaṭṭhāna^[2] as you know this, and specific directions like Ānāpānasati^[3], mindfulness of breathing, or Satipaṭṭhāna, the establishments of mindfulness. We definitely see this kind of encouragement perhaps for some precision and directions.

But we also find in the suttas a lot of verse that is less specific perhaps, but using a different way of expressing, and maybe a little bit more feeling into and indirectly pointing to. In the same way, we find a lot of similes and metaphors. A way in which we can sense or feel our way in.

Just a recognition that there's different ways to practice, and that it can be tremendously valuable to be malleable with this. To use both ways. To use a way that maybe works until it doesn't work, and then you can maybe try something else, follow the instructions. But when you don't have access to the instructions or they don't make sense, then maybe what is the intuitive way? Or maybe you're feeling your way in, and you feel like you're stuck and you're not sure where to go, then what are the instructions? So, just an encouragement to explore and play with this.

To build on this idea of different ways of approaching practice or being with practice, is to point to the way in which poetry, as opposed to prose, is often a different way in which things might get expressed or we might express things ourselves. The beauty of poetry is that it requires that the person who's writing the poem have some real clarity, have some acuity, have some real connection with what it is they're trying to express. So that then it can be expressed in a compact way or expressed with metaphor, so that maybe the person who hears or reads the poem can feel their way into what the person who wrote the poem was experiencing with some real precision.

The Redwood and the House

I'd like to read this poem and talk about it a little bit. It's written by Jane Hirshfield. She is a poet, and she's also a Zen practitioner, and she practiced at the San Francisco Zen Center, and I believe she lived at Tassajara^[4] for a while. She also translates from Japanese and writes essays. It's a short poem that she wrote that's very beautiful. In my view, I think it's really beautiful. Maybe I'll have a little drink of water first here.

So the poem goes:

It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books— Already the first branch tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

For the Buddha in ancient India, the Bodhi tree was magnificent, majestic—maybe it had some sacredness to it, in the way that the Bodhi trees are. But for Jane Hirshfield and those of us living in California, the redwood tree has this tremendous majesty, dignity. It's quite something. For those of you who have been in redwood groves, you know that there can just be a sense of awe, a sense of being in a cathedral. Some of you know how redwood trees propagate: young trees, the saplings, grow a certain distance from the parent tree. So what happens over the years is all the youngsters, the children trees if you will, are in a concentric circle around the parent. And then over time, if the parent dies, you're left with these rings of redwood trees that can be incredible to stand inside. It has the feeling of being in a cathedral.

In this poem, we might understand that trees, redwood trees in particular, represent practice. It represents something that's awesome, more sacred or majestic, or has a certain amount of dignity and uprightness to them. And then the house, we can understand for the Buddha, the house represented attachments. Things that we fill our life with, and the things that we grab onto and cling to, and are grasping to. Things that we are getting tangled up with. You might recall that in the story of the Buddha, he left the household life. This can be literal, but it can also be symbolic of leaving behind those things that we busy ourselves with. Those things that we use to support a sense of self, promote a sense of self, protect a sense of self, that we really are identified with. In a way in which there isn't freedom, in a way in which there isn't ease, but that we're there. These things that are sticky, and maybe that we're tangled up with.

So Jane Hirshfield writes it's foolish to plant a young redwood next to a house. The Buddha used this word foolish. He called people foolish sometimes. We hear this: "You foolish person." But he was saying this to those people who didn't recognize that what they were doing was a source of suffering for themselves, and presumably for others as well. To be foolish, in the Buddha's words, is to not recognize that what you think is going to be a source of happiness is actually a source of suffering. And to become sensitive to that is an encouragement to understand the difference between what are sources of lasting happiness—that's not just pleasure—as opposed to what leads to suffering.

Then Jane Hirshfield writes, "Even in this one lifetime you will have to choose." For those who have been here to the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, there's plenty of redwood trees here. There's a redwood tree that's out in front of the building here; it's probably eight feet in diameter. It's a big tree. Can you imagine what would have happened, literally, if this tree were planted right next to this building, and the tree just grew and grew? There would be big problems with this meditation center (this used to be a church before it was a meditation center, of course).

Those of you who have been here to IMC, you might have noticed that the sidewalk that goes next to where the tree is, a number of years ago started to buckle because of the roots from this tree. You know, the tree is just standing there, but yet it has the strength, has this power to cause the sidewalk to have to shift. And we were concerned that somebody might trip over this sidewalk. So we called the City of Redwood City. And they brought their municipal department out. In my mind, I thought, "Oh, maybe they might shave off some of the roots," and of course leaving the rest of the root so that tree could survive, and then just put a new sidewalk down.

But no, they were pretty savvy to the way of redwood trees, and they rerouted the sidewalk around this tree. Maybe four feet they moved it around this tree. I felt quite touched by that actually, that they kind of wanted to honor and respect that. "Okay, here's this tree." This whole municipal works, all these individuals, were like, "We're just going to walk around this tree." Just recognizing the power, the strength of this being that is just standing there in a calm way. Practice might just be there in a calm way, and yet there might be some movement underneath that we can't see with the roots, that starts to shake things up and starts to cause things to shift and to dismantle.

Jane Hirshfield writes, "Even in this one lifetime you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books." Our practice, our meditation practice, our insights, our growing wisdom, our growing compassion, is going to touch into all of our life. Jane, maybe it's a little bit autobiographical, she's talking about this clutter of soup pots and books. I'm assuming she's a poet and a translator and an essayist, that she probably has a lot of books and maybe she likes to cook. But also this idea of a clutter of things. Or things clutter often, things that are dismissed. They're not taken care of, we don't pay attention to them. They are a little bit unruly in a way that can be bothersome. Often we just don't pay attention to clutter, that's why it's clutter.

Shifting Our Relationship to Clutter

So you'll have to choose between that great calm being and this clutter of soup pots and books. Just as it is the nature of trees to grow—it's what trees do, of course—it's the nature of practice to grow, and it starts to expand and touch into those things that we are attached to. So it's not the soup pots per se, it's not the books per se, it's not the clutter per se that we're being asked to dismantle. It's the clinging. It's the grasping, it's the belief that these are going to be sources of lasting happiness. It's the hiding behind the objects that we fill our lives with. It's the trying to bolster a sense of how we think we should be, instead of how we actually are.

So practice does two things: it helps us to see more clearly these things that we cling to, grasp, that we're attached to, things that have some stickiness for us. So practice helps us to see clearly, or maybe we feel it, maybe we feel the contraction that goes with clinging and grasping. But practice also helps us to gain the confidence or the wherewithal in which we can diminish, or let go of, or stop, or cease the clinging, the grasping, the attachments.

So it's not asking us to let go of the soup pots and books, but to shift our relationship to these things in our lives. If you want to stay really attached, and really want to stay grasping and clinging to all the things that are in your life, whether they are helpful or not, but to really want to hold on to them, then don't practice. It's foolish to plant a young redwood next to a house.

The Buddha recognized that the house could also be a metaphor for a self. That is, the way that we think that we should be, the way that we want to project to the world, or the ideas that we have about ourselves, or any ideas that we have about a constant, enduring self, without recognizing that there isn't an inherent, constant self. Attributed to the Buddha soon after his awakening is this verse, another little poem. This is in the Dhammapada^[5] collection of verses. So the Buddha says:

House builder, you are seen! You will not build a house again. All the rafters are broken, the ridgepole destroyed. The mind, gone to the unconstructed, has reached the end of craving.

This poem seems a little bit violent in some way, that things are broken and destroyed. It doesn't have to be that way, but we can just gently dismantle, just gently deconstruct some of the houses, so to speak, that we've constructed. We can let go, soften the ways in which we cling or hold on to. I know for me, I noticed that some resentments or grudges that I might have had, they just stop making sense to hold on to them. These are things that we carry from the past, or maybe they're happening here in the present, but the way that they reinforce a sense of self, as opposed to a sense of recognizing of what's here, and the way that we are constructing that we want to be seen a particular way. If we can soften that, then some of the grudges can go away, or the resentments.

Immensity Taps at Your Life

So Jane Hirshfield continues in this poem, "Already the first branch tips brush at the window." She's pointing to the branch tips that are above the ground. But maybe by the time the branch tips have gotten to the window, the roots have already gotten underneath the house, and maybe they're in the sewage system, or wrecking some type of havoc. But this way in which the branch tips meet the window is a way in which practice meets our life.

One way we can understand it—and it's not always pleasant—I want to also bring to mind these stories within the Buddha's life. Before his awakening, while he still had a house, so to speak, he met Mara^[6]. Mara as the personification, or maybe we could say the aspect of the heart and the mind, that creates roadblocks, or gives excuses, or procrastinates. Or that aspect of the mind that urges us to avoid all the unpleasant mind states or any of the uncomfortableness that we might experience in our practice. But that always accompany the healing that happens, or always accompany when practice is moving into more and more areas of our life. There are some aspects that are uncomfortable.

So this meeting, maybe the branch tips against the window, or making an uncomfortable sound, is a recognition that it's not always simple, it's not always easy, it's not always pleasant. But by committing to practice, and by committing to having the heart's liberation and greater freedom, it also means that we're committing to meeting these things, meaning what might be uncomfortable or difficult. And you know, even after his awakening, many of you know that Mara came and still visited the Buddha. And then the Buddha would meet him with loving awareness, with wisdom, and would simply say, "I see you, Mara." And Mara would skulk away.

In this way we might reflect on the ways in which practice has shown up in our lives. And then the last line of the poem: "Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life." Immensity, this vastness, this boundlessness, limitlessness, tapping at your life, which maybe is a little bit stronger than brush tips against the window. Is this an invitation, a recognition that we don't have to limit ourselves? We don't have to create strict definitions in which we define ourselves or define our experience.

And with that, as practice progresses, we might also understand that maybe there's a shift. In this poem she writes, "That calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books." Maybe with practice the emphasis shifts. This calm being, my experience, and that clutter becomes more clear. We can feel our way into somehow, some way, to where there's more freedom and less freedom.

It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books— Already the first branch tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

Thank you.