Way of Oneness: A Sangha Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Excerpt:

At the heart of the teaching of impermanence is conditioned existence but what is conditioned existence?

Conditioned existence is the reality that all phenomena, all things that exist  arise in dependence upon other phenomena: "if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist" 

This is the heart of impermanence of all - because all things all phenomena arise out of conditions and when the condition causes it to arise, cease then, that which arose, vanishes or transforms into something different.   That is way the Buddha says,

“All conditioned things have the nature of vanishing,”

Let that sink in 

Everything by its nature vanishes.

In Japanese the heartbreak, the melancholy of the impermanence of all things is summed up in the phrase Mono no Aware. 

Mono-no-aware can’t truly be translated. Any one who speaks another language understands this but it can be literally translated to “the ahhness of things” The isness of things or “the bittersweet poignancy of things.”

 

I remember some years ago reading the introduction to one of my favorite poets Eugenio de Andrade.   The poet writes from his love of the world and the grief and praise that come from its transience. 

Something that I am learning as of late is that Grief and Praise are intertwined, as Martin Prechtel teaches us in his book, The Smell of Rain on Dust. 

So too are impermanence and gratitude. 

Now the concept of mono-no-aware is born from the teachings of shinto and Buddhism, and was first used to explain Japanese aesthetics to explain uch traditions as cherry-blossom viewing and haiku.  But this insight is much more than simply aesthetics. 

Mono No Aware is at the heart of a meaningful everyday Buddhism.

In this talk we explore the idea of bonbu - of each of us being "foolish beings" and who this informs our community and practice.

Excerpt

"It is our studentship that we share, not our specialness or holiness. It is with humility being aware of our limitations. As I have said time and time again,  I too will be disappointed, and that I do not nor have I ever claimed to be a guru or a master, just a foolish being. 

This idea of the foolish or ordinary being is the foundation to what we do.  And I want to continue our translation of the Shin Tradition. Today it is an idea that is very central in the Shin Tradition - called bonbu."

Excerpt

 

When I first started to explore and examine this precept, my first inclination was to feel guilt for taking paper clips from work or printing things for personal uses on my work computer.  Funny, that I found ways around it Like buying a ream of paper to replace the 40 pages I used. I started to make sure I paid for all of my Trax rides.

I did start to examine some of my motivations for doing what I was doing, but for me, most of these simple practices were very superficial and more a residual of my old relationships with the Judeo- Christian commandments.  Again, we do not practice the precepts to appease a deity, or because it makes us a good Buddhist, but to help us gain insight into the mindset of an awakened being, a state of mind that is grounded in contentment.

A practice-based on any kind of checklist is just a checklist and ultimately non-transformative.  There is a much deeper meaning in the second precept than simply not taking something that belongs to someone else. That is a legalistic approach. 

Buddhism teaches that there are 10 fetters - mental chains that keep us bound - one of them is the dependence on moral rules and religious observances as an end in themselves – Being circumspect and never “stealing” even paperclips may be laudable but is it transformative in itself. Maybe.  

From my life experience, the end of the second precept is not simply about not stealing, about observance a rule but about how we perceive the world and our place in it.  It is about cultivating a state of mind of contentment, of enoughness. Gyomay Kubose Sensei teaches us that an agitated mind cannot see things as they are, only a calm mind can. A continual sense of lack, a subtle greed, creates great and subtle waves of agitation. And over time this creates a subtle and pernicious sense of entitlement.

At the heart of the second precept is an antidote to this continual refrain and rationalization of taking something not freely given, “I deserve this” or I deserve more than I am being given.  These are all manifestations of the poison of greed."

Even though the precepts were not directed to the community directly, they are all about community. The precepts are about action and intention.  I appreciate this from Wendell Berry,

“ To act in short is to live. Living is a total act. Thinking is a partial act. And one does not live alone. Living is a communal act…

He goes on to quote Emerson,

“I grasp the hand of those next to me, and take my place in the circle, to suffer and work.”

I love the lack of sentimentality in these words. For us, the suffering is the first noble truth- dukkha – the acknowledgment that in the midst of life there is suffering and for us, the work is the practice.  The precepts can be seen as the practice.  This is what we do as a Sangha, we take each other's hand in our suffering and do the work. And what precept is more at the heart of community than affirming life?  The first precept is from which all the other precepts flow. 

 

Excerpt from the dharma talk.

 

The heaviest burdens we can carry are the burdens of the past- either for something that was done to us or done by us, and we spend so much time there.   I have talked about this before, that we are constantly time-traveling from the past to the future and rarely present in the flow of now.  We fix ourselves firmly in the past or because our dissatisfaction with the present or our unwillingness to change in the present, we travel constantly to the future, where everything is controllable, and the outcomes can be as expected. As Gyomay Kubose Sensei teaches, 

 

"Many people get attached to the past or to the future and neglect the important present. We must live the best "now" with full responsibility." 

 

I think we understand this though many of us do nothing about it. I think that is why Gyomay Sensei ends his teaching with the idea of living with full responsibility.  

This is something I have been thinking about in our current environment. With so much polarity in our greater community, we stop listening to one another and when we do we start seeing one another as enemies. The Buddha taught 2600 years ago that hatreds never cease through hatred ... through love alone they cease. This is an eternal law. The challenge we face is that our own righteous anger can be a barrier to listening and close us off from love. Sometimes I think we fall into this trap when we see our anger as " righteous", a species of anger the embraces duality and sees only victims and perpetrators, and anyone of a different tribe as alien and a threat. Unfortunately for us all, regardless of what side of the polarity we abide, we are both complicit of such thinking. It makes me wonder how much of my righteous anger is more about my suffering and could the depth of my righteous anger be the level of my own suffering and more about me no matter how much I pretend it is about others? And if that is true should I not attend to that suffering within me that is overflowing?   I want to always remember that protective anger, it is not violent but assertive, not blinded by “righteousness”, not fickle, but determined. Protective anger is awake, intentional, wise and focused on liberating ALL beings from suffering delusion and stupidity   Namu Amida Butsu

From the dharma talk

 

"Many appreciate and value the teachings of the Buddha,  post endless memes with quotes he said and never said, there are some who have got out of bad marriages, bad jobs because of something they read or heard on a Buddhist podcast – and all this is the fruit of the teaching. At the same time, going for refuge is more than just an intellectual appreciation of the Buddhas Brains.

Going for refuge is not simply an activity of thinking, of ideas or concepts but the walking of the path of the Buddha. It is an activity of the heart. It is important to note that in Chinese the same character is used to convey “heart” and “mind,” and that the two are seen by the Chinese as one inseparable “heartmind.”

Taking refuge in the dharma can be seen as taking the teachings from the conceptual to the everyday – we take refuge in the dharma in our hearts."