The Human Route:
Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed--
that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud which disappears.
The floating cloud itself originally does not exist. Life and death, coming and going, are also like that.
But there is one thing which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death.
Then what is the one pure and clear thing?
HIT!
This point demonstrates this before thinking mind. No speech, no words! Only, HIT! This question is capable of giving us a complete don’t know. Whereupon we discover our before thinking mind. HIT! Our mind before conceptual thought was here. HIT! This is our true nature.
This before thinking mind is clear like space. Clear like a mirror. It only reflects. When red comes, only red. When white comes, only white. The clear mirror does not attach to what it reflects. It does not say: Oh, where did the red go? I want the red to come back! I don’t like this white! If a hungry person comes, we give them food. If a thirsty person comes we give them something to drink. This is Great love, Great compassion. The Great Bodhisattva Way. When our mind is clear we see clearly, we hear clearly, smell, taste, touch and think clearly.
This is Truth world. Now we can see the truth, our relationship to it and our correct function can appear. This is Moment world. Moment by moment by moment we help ourselves and this world. But when our thoughts/feelings cover up our clear mind our correct function in this world is not possible. Any sincere deep looking into this world! At life! At death! Will also give us this “don’t know” mind.
It has: no name and form, no time and space, no cause and effect. It is outside of all these conditions. Outside of these conceptual qualities. This is the same point the Heart Sutra is making when Avalokitesvara says: “Form is emptiness, emptiness is form…The same is true of feelings, perception, impulses, consciousness.” Our practice is learning to trust this “don’t know,” trust our true self, trust our true nature.
During the storms of strong emotions that blow through us like hurricanes we can use mindful breathing to be/stay in our bodies, to let the thought arise: I am not just one emotion, or, I am more than these tornado-like feelings. Like a tree in the wind we don’t reside in the branches being whipped about back and forth. We sink down to our deep belly breathing, to our root of experience, and become still in the storm… “don’t know.” Like the Everglades, we don’t mind when a hurricane comes. We don’t fight the feelings. It’s just refreshing.
Yes, these feelings are here, welcome them in. Breathe them in and embody them without resistance… What is this? Don’t know… We never “push down.” Don’t know is not stupid. It is not “I” don’t know. It is our mind before we make; I, my, me. We each have this river of emotion flowing through us.
Changing, changing, changing. I don’t like this, I do like that. Emotions appear, are here for some time, then they go. (If we don’t hold on to them.) Using mindful breathing we stay with them, see what they have to teach us, and then let them go. This way we attain our emotions, our karma, then learning the function of our karma is possible.
I’m going to stir up some trouble here. I want to look deeply at something we share: Regarding our shared American karma, we have institutions that embody racism.
Hundreds of years of systemic racism have influenced our social structures. We can look deeply into this shared experience and heal the trauma it has caused in the past, in the present and future. When we follow Avalokitesvara instructions to look deeply; When we become Avalokitesvara. We look deeply. We will see not just our own mind and hearts, but our parent’s minds and hearts. As we look more deeply still we will see our grandparents, we will see all the generations before us.
We must make a safe space for all these deep emotions and scars to heal. We must make a still space for all these deep emotions and scars to heal. First, we become still, then we can heal. It’s a case of “both and.” Our karma is both personal and impersonal. Make a big don’t know, a big space of safety, stillness and healing.
Growing up, I was taught by Jesuits in my Catholic High School. There is a lot they did NOT teach me about the Church. If they had, I might have left it then. I could not memorize this passage… I found I could not because it was so unpleasant. So, I’ll read it:
“The justification of the European invasion of the America’s and almost all subsequent colonial enterprises can be found in numerous historical documents.
Pope Nicholas V first articulated the Doctrine of Discovery in the document fittingly called the papal bull Dum Diversas in 1452:
We grant you (Kings of Spain and Portugal) by these present documents, with our Apostolic Authority, full and free permission to invade, search out, capture, and subjugate the Saracens and pagans and any other unbelievers and enemies of Christ wherever they may be, as well as their kingdoms, duchies, counties, principalities, and other property (…) and to reduce their persons into perpetual slavery.
…This fulfilled the spiritual and legal basis for the Doctrine of Discovery, the grand justification for colonization. Once the Catholic Pope in the Vatican did it, then, later on, the Anglicans had to do it in the Americas. They produced their own equivalent of the Doctrine of Discovery…”
Excerpted from:
America’s Racial Karma An invitation to heal, by Dr. Larry Ward PhD.
To quote Dr. Ward again:
“This is a religious scandal. What makes this a religious scandal is that it is a lie about the sacred nature of a human being.”
Let’s look at our strong emotions, both difficult and joyful. Let us attain them and find their correct function.
One last point I’d like to make. Here is the poem Eternity by William Blake.
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies,
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.
Change the gender and read it again.
Change “joy” to “pain” and read it again.
Change “joy” to “trauma” and read it again.
“Eternity’s sunrise.” What is this? It is “moment world.” Eternity is not a real long time. It is an eternal now. Moment by moment by moment, we have now, now, now, now………
Hit, hit, hit, hit.
William Blake, like the Buddha, is telling us; Stay in this moment 100%, don’t hold anything, don’t make anything. This way we actually are fully alive and free to help this world out of suffering.