The Most Basic Truths: Gateways to Freedom

so what i'd like to talk about tonight and we'll see how it goes um i'd like to talk about the most basic truths in buddhist teaching and i've come to it in part because in these last months i've been talking about the war in ukraine and the pandemic and the collective anxiety and all these other things and it feels like it's time to come back to the basics i'll start with a poem that answers a kind of question for us as human beings human incarnation what kind of world did we incarnate into so this is a poem from bridget lowry that i often read in the strange early morning half-light we set it is by the way a meditation poem in the cloudiness of our questioning we sit in our madness and our clarity we sit in the midst of too much to do we said in the warm arms of our shared sorrow we set in community and in loneliness we said in sweet exhaustion we sit in the blazing energy of being alive we sit here with the singing of the coyotes and the crickets here with each electric bird song here with the rippling of breezes and the great trees and the dry grasses here with the cobwebs and the clouds and the teeming masses and the dusty road upon us us in the sound and the sound in us us in the world and the world in us so here we are with this human incarnation given a human life and of course at this time maybe in all times but right now there are things that are quite difficult especially if you're here where i am in north america there's the growing fire season and then we look at the images in the news and there's floods and refugees and climate change and of course the wars ukraine and myanmar and libya and so many other places so there's all those kind of difficult images and troubles of this human realm that we're born into and then last night there was the eclipse the blood red moon really kind of magic to watch the eclipse because you could see the shadow of our sphere moving across the face of the moon and at least in north america there's spring and blossoms you know it's the plowing season in some places maybe that would be the beginning of the rainy season for others and there is in california this year a renewed migration of monarch butterflies that not so many had been seen for a long time so there's the troubles and there's the springtime and the music of the spheres and when i was first taught in the monasteries in thailand and burma and so forth the key to the basic natures of life basic nature of life was repeated over and over again everything is a nietzsche or impermanent look at it everything is dukkha which means unsatisfactory and everything is anata anicha duken anata means emptiness selflessness and so forth and we'll talk about all of them and the reason that these were repeated over and over is they were saying if you see these you see with the eyes of wisdom so zen masters sing-son sansine korean zen master with whom i studied he said once a great man sat under the bodhi tree saw the morning star and gained enlightenment he saw the sky was blue the earth was brown and all things were rising and passing things were just as they are and then he really knew the nature of things and his enlightenment was complete he saw things the way they are arising and passing blue sky brown earth or krishnamurti the great sage said it is the truth that liberates and not your efforts to be free seeing the way things are and of course to survive because we have this very complex human brain the tre the brain besides seeing the way things are here in the present also tries to anticipate keep you safe and fix and stabilize and imagine so the first of these basic truths is a nietzsche impermanence and you say well what's the big deal of course things change why is it why is this news you know the stock market's gone down then it will go up sometime it's just what things do the phases of the moon change but there's something deeper to feel and know and the point of it is seeing with the eyes of wisdom it brings a kind of liberation here's a phrase from the texts karma changes or karma can change like the swish of a horse's tail that is at one time everything seems hunky-dory and fine and going along and then in a moment an accident or a diagnosis you know or an opportunity or an asteroid or who knows what a pandemic and everything gets turned topsy turvy karma can change like the swish of a horse's tail and then all of a sudden you go oh yeah whoops and echa things are not as stable as we thought not so solid and we're watching the contest of empires the russian empire trying to get back you know and the chinese empire trying to get big the way it was a thousand years ago or something in the u.s empire what did chief seattle say tribe follows tribe and nation follows nation even empires come and go and wars arise for time and then they end there's always an end to a war even however horrific and terrible and sad it is then it ends then of course there might be a new war and a new conflict this is a nietzsche it's where we live where you live where i live now in psychology 101 there's an experiment that's often done in which three buckets of water are placed in the front of the room one bucket has hot water quite hot one bucket has room temperature and one bucket has ice water with ice cubes in it and the unsuspecting student who volunteers to come up for the psychological experiment is invited to take two hands and place one in the bucket of ice water and one in the bucket of quite hot water and see how long they can stand it having their hands in there usually 30 seconds or a minute or whatever it's not that easy then the next instruction when they take their hands out is to put them in the bucket of room temperature water and let them touch each other and in that moment there's this funny expression that comes over the face of the psychology student because to one hand the water feels really cold that water that and that was in the hot water and to the other hand touching it the water feels really hot the hand that had been in the ice water and their perceptions are warped somehow like which perception can i trust you know my dear friends and i have to include myself in this we get pretty attached to our perceptions of things and yet they're not really quite certain are they the buddha said at one point people who cling to views views people who cling to views the wise ones he said don't cling to views but people who cling to views go about the world annoying others that's sort of one of the passages that i think is a little bit of humor from the buddha or maybe he was just experiencing that so what changes our perceptions you know you're a libertarian or a republican or a democrat or a whatever that certain portion of your life and then it might change your views change what else changes it's said in the buddhist text that who we are are the five skandas sometimes translated as the five aggregates or the five rivers is how i like to translate it a river of physical experience and sensations of the body a river of feelings a river of perceptions and views a river of ma of of perceptions and thoughts a river of thoughts and images [Music] and a river of consciousness and they're always changing you could see it when you're sad in meditation nothing stayed the same for a moment as you paid attention now here's why anita is important to understand because everything is changing the more you cling and hold on the more you suffer holding on is called rope burn you try to hold on to things and they're changing whether it's the views or the world or the empires or your emotions i remember this story of a couple these two men who got married and part of their celebration in their life was to take a road trip to montreal to the biggest bonsai tree garden in north america amazing bonsais imported from japan and china and grown there and so they got in the car and they drove a long way up to into canada from where they lived in new england and they got there one of the guys had arranged the trip and was really happy because he loved bonsai they both did and they could and they got to this gates of this huge garden and it was padlocked shot and this was before the pandemic sorry we're closed on whatever it is tuesday wednesday and thursday we're open these days of the week and his partner looked at him and said didn't you check on this and got all upset and frustrated we drove all the way here and the guy who'd done the driving and brought them there just got quiet and said let's see let's take a little walk here maybe we can figure something out what's he going to figure out he's going to call somebody is there a way to get in can they open it and he just started walking along the huge this is a giant botanical garden along the gate and along the front wall high wall you could see the beautiful fruit trees and amazing trees inside you walked and walked just trying to get quiet figure out what should we do next and went around the corner at the end of that long front part of the garden and started to walk further and now all of a sudden to his and their surprise the wall stopped it was a facade on the roadside of the garden but as they walked along the side there was no wall and they could walk right in which they did whatever day it was close or not and one of them smiled and the other sort of apologized you know how it is being a couple but the idea was that instead of saying things are or aren't possible instead of getting so frustrated to be open and say oh i wonder what's going to happen next to have that spirit because the truth is that the body produces 500 sorry 100 billion new red blood cells every day that's 50 000 in the time that i read these few sentences your body's making that there are a trillion living creatures in your gut and in parts of your body little ones that live in your eyelashes and your eyebrows and so forth all having their little bacteria virus buggy little life being born and dying you are this walking my friend wes calls it a walking feedlot for you know for this entire cornucopia of life you lose 600 000 particles of skin an hour and it's replaced in that hour you get a new stomach lining regrown every five days and all the major parts of your liver are recreated every six weeks your eyebrows take four months but who you are is this river of change that's constantly changing and opening and evolving and as we become wise we step back and see the mystery of it instead of how it's supposed to be so i had a friend who was the hospice director of a very big hospice for some years and one day he went in he'd been working with a lot of the patients who are dying and there was an old italian man there whose family kept coming in to attend to him his children and so forth and they came in one morning and they said we need to talk to the hospice director they said we have a problem a question our father is here it was three of the children and he's very close to dying but his younger brother was killed yesterday in a car accident and we don't know whether we should tell him because he's so close to dying himself maybe we'll agitate him and make him feel terrible maybe he was just leave him and let him be in that state of loving his brother and not knowing about the loss what should we do and my friend the hospice director said well let's go in and see your father and see how he's doing and maybe we'll understand better when we do that so here's this kind of open-minded response not exactly this is right or that's wrong and they went in and they sat with the father who was pretty weak but still conscious and could speak and they said we're so glad to see you dad and how are you you know he said i'm getting weaker and my time is coming and then he looked at them and he said don't you have something to tell me and they said what do you mean he said about my brother don't you know he died and they said well how do you know that he said oh i've been talking to him all morning there's a little bit of a mystery for you and i could tell you 50 more stories like this who are we born into this body this human incarnation who do you think you are so things change and i remember a retreat that was taught by michelle mcdonald she was teaching in east coast in our center in barrie and she also worked in a family program so she liked to work with little kids and she brought this group of little kids i think they were like kindergarteners or something and said let's talk about things being born and things dying and kids are interested in that so they talked about it some and then she said i'll tell you what let's let's learn more about it you go out in the woods which was around where we are and bring back whatever you find that's that's died and we'll look at it together and the kids ran out excitedly and they brought some dead leaves or some sticks and one kid found a little bit of a skeleton of some mouse that had died and it was there you know and somebody else the other kid found a bone or they found some something else that was dying they brought them all back together made a pile and said wow all these things in the forest have died and then she said well what do you think about this you know trying to understand how it looked to these five-year-olds and one of the kids said well it looks like everything you know in the forest there for a while and it dies and another little kid piped up and said yeah it's a good thing because if the trees and the branches and things didn't die then there'd be more and more and more of them they get so close together and then there'd be no room for us they knew somehow that change actually is the opportunity for something new to come and that death isn't something wrong it's natural as emily dickinson said because i did not stop for death he kindly stopped for me it's just part of incarnation so you might as well relax and become the loving awareness become the sky of awareness and see how things are changing but then there arises all our anxiety the emotions of being anxious and worry the stories we tell ourselves the body what about coven what about the stock market what about you know whatever it is that worries you what about family all these things and the mind kicks in it's trying to protect you from change the practice is not to resist the anxiety and the thoughts not to judge them but to bow and say thank you thank you for trying to protect me i'm okay just now and not let the voices of anxiety take over the heart you can name them oh here's worry here's anxiety thank you and then ground yourself and become part of the earth or feel the openness of the sky through which the birds and the clouds and everything come and go or the trees of the forest renewing itself and people will call me you know friends people i've taught over the years and work with i'm going into surgery my teenage son is dealing with addiction he's in trouble and we talk about the specifics what you can do how do you resource yourself how do you support yourself and then often i'll say make an altar put a little altar with a picture of your teenage son on it and surround that picture with kuan yin or buddha or you know whoever you value let yourself reflect on who carries the spirit that most matters to you in this world whether they're alive now or whether they're an archetypal being the buddha or mother mary and make a bow maybe light a candle and say to mother mary and kuan yin and the buddha and so forth will you please hold my boy will you hold him so that i don't have to worry quite so much i am traveling at great speed toward a star in the milky way my heart's a little fast otherwise everything's okay the voice of a poet with a nietzsche we step back and say the galaxy is turning things change and we learn the trusting heart the practice of sitting in meditation is to learn the trusting heart oh nobly born it says remember your true nature become the loving awareness the shift of identity from that small worried person to the buddha that you are and i see it in my cohort you know i'm about to turn 77. i know a lot of dead people lots of friends who are sick many people in my address i used to have an address book now it's electronic whoa half of them aren't you're in this incarnation anymore it's happening you know they're moving off stage we're in the queue so to speak and then there are all these new grandchildren you know and and and what follows just reflect for a moment because life is renewing itself through you around you you're a part of it you are life renewing itself even as you get ready as you age and die you're in the recycle process we'll talk more but here's a reflection quiet yourself maybe even let your eyes close what is changing in your life what are the big things that are changing and what would the wisest part of you say in response to this change what would the wisest part say here's how to hold this you can know you already do it makes us come more alive more trusting this impermanence i think of my old friend and colleague steven levine we taught retreats together and taught and practiced together and remember he would ask people you'd say if you only had a short time to live he was teaching death and dying retreats you would say if you only had a short time to live who would you call what would you say and why are you waiting this is the wisdom of impermanence of trust and living fully just where we are then anitra goes to dukkha is this complicated term and has a lot of meanings but mostly it means things are insecure and uncertain or they're also translated as suffering and if we look with the eyes of wisdom well all we have to do is turn on the news and the conflict domestic terrorism and buffalo and the continuing scourge of racism as if some people are you know better than other people or the kind of really it's kind of crazy that here's a little child born and what particular color they are are they green or brown or black or white or yellow or right what color you are determines your value it's kind of insane but the suffering from it is enormous this is dukkha just like the wars are dukkha these are the big ones in the news the pandemic the climate change this is your human incarnation folks mine too so the buddha under the bodhi tree when he attained enlightenment at the time of the morning star like that poem said he sat quietly for a time as the story is told and then he turned his eye his wisdom eye toward the world of living beings across the whole world and he saw beings everywhere wanting to be happy yet often doing the very thing that made them unhappy and the tears of the great heart of compassion rolled down his cheeks and it said in one of the myths or stories that those tears turned into tara the goddess of infinite compassion was born out of those tears but he saw the sufferings of the world and immediately that great heart of compassion that was also the buddha nature began to shine in every direction so to understand dukkha there are three kinds of dukkha there's anichiduka that is the dukkha of change joy and sorrow praise and blame gain and loss pleasure and pain fame and disrepute however wonderful you know that incredible meal and that great vacation and that sexual ecstatic experience i hope you had at some time and that you know delicious spiritual you know fantastic awakening and so forth there's that little voice inside that says god i wish this would last but it doesn't the duke of change now the good thing is that when things are terrible they don't last either but this is one kind of duka that nothing lasts and seeing it with the eyes of wisdom and the heart go okay i have to really get this you can't hold on the second kind of dukkha is the duka of pain physical and mental pain and as part of what we learn in meditation is to sit and your knee hurts and your back hurts and you're having physical pain and we live in a culture that basically wants to uh you know sell you a prescription a painkiller the moment you're a little uncomfortable we live in a culture that fears discomfort you have to do anything to stay comfortable good luck it doesn't work that way but when you take your seat with some dignity and allow the itches and the pleasures and the pains and the tightness and the release and the opening and then the energies that are stuck in the body you allow all of that there becomes this opening of trust of loving awareness and a deepening capacity expanding the window of tolerance to hold it all in compassion and it's physical pain yours sometimes it's harder when it's the physical pain of someone near you and if you haven't learned to sit with it you can't hold somebody else's hand when they're in the hospital or at an accident or dying because you don't know how to be with it you don't know how to rest in loving awareness and say yes this too and then my friend vivek morty who's the surgeon general of the united states said that more than half of what comes into the hospitals and clinics across america is really based on emotional pain and suffering it's not even the physical suffering so this is the second kind of dukkha physical and mental pain you all know it because it's part of incarnation we have it and then the third kind which is called sankhara duka sankara means all the different uh all the things that make up or arise and make up the the whole world the form of the world of duality sankara duke is just the nature of things that to have a globe and a a world and a moon and a solar system and galaxies and so forth there's light and dark there's birth and death there is unbearable beauty amazing beauty and an ocean of tears and the buddha said at one point you've been born and died so many times that the bones of even one person's incarnation piled up would be as high as the great mount vepula taller than taller than everest that's how many times you've taken incarnation now it may or may not be true but what it was pointing to is that built into this human life is this birth and death and born and dying and born and dying each day each moment it's what we are and then the text goes on did you never see a man or a woman aged bent down with blotched limbs walking with a cane or sick and lying in bed did you never see a corpse after their life energy is passed from the body and did the thought never happen to come to you oh this will happen to me too but we live in a culture that says get more money more power more things consume do travel get these installed which are fine i liked some of them too but the message is if you do it right there won't be dukkha i'm sorry i am really sorry it's not how it works and i know people who are very little who are insanely joyful and happy and people who literally have billions of dollars in anything you could buy and really struggle with sorrow and unhappiness i could just ask how many of you have duca raise your hand but you don't have to bother because we know but just as impermanence gives birth to trust when you really see it deeply and you realize oh just as things like the kids saw in that forest are dying it makes room for something new to be born you begin to trust the process of turning even as you sit and the emotions come and you make space and there's sadness and fear and you allow it and it rises in a big way and then if you stay with it it passes and there you are still the loving witness of it all so just as a nietzsche impermanence gifts is the doorway to trust dukkha gives birth to compassion they come together they make a courageous heart tiknot han was asked not so long ago about climate change before he died and he was asked this from a student should i sit and meditate and go on retreat and somehow purify my heart will that help will that make the difference is that what i should do i'm worried about climate change or should i go out on the barricade should i protest should i get politically involved what should i do and take that han got quiet and looked back and said just listen until you can hear the sounds of the earth crying he didn't tell the student what to do he just said let yourself open and hear and feel and listen and sense the truth your grief becomes a doorway as ryoka says if the drink is bitter then turn yourself into wine so you sit and you quiet the mind and open the heart and you listen till you can hear the sounds of the earth crying you know there's a story of a old rabbi acidic rabbi who used to talk about the practice of prayer and meditation and he always uses a strange phrase he would say when you meditate when you pray when you offer these prayers you'll recite them feel them and place them on your heart and one day a student said rabbi rabbi why do you always use that strange phrase place them on your heart shouldn't we putting put them in our heart and the rabbi got quiet and he said it's not us who can put them in the heart maybe he said it's god that puts him in the heart or the divine or something deeper than our own will he said our practice is to recite them and place them on the heart so that someday when the heart breaks they will fall in and this is how grief and dukkha becomes the doorway to compassion a poem for you called everyday grace by stella nassanovic it can happen like that meeting at the auto repair buying tires amidst the smell of rubber the grating sound of jackhammers and drills anywhere we share stories grace flows between us the tire center waiting room becomes a healing place as one speaks of her husband's heart valve replacement bed sores from complications a man speaks of multiple surgeries notes his false appearance is strong and healthy i share my sister's death from breast casts cancer her youngest only seven a woman rises gives her name mrs henry then takes my hand suddenly an ordinary day becomes holy ground and this is how we connect we hold hands there's something so innate in us when they're suffering you can look at ukraine and see all the terrible things but you also see nations and doctors without borders and world central kitchen and people from every direction pouring in their love and help and support that is also us it brings us the deepest compassion impermanence yes dukkha part of this incarnation it's here baby it is us and yet it connects us in compassion and love it does so quiet and close your eyes again for a moment what is calling to you what suffering what loss what difficulty in your life in the world what is calling to you and saying yes don't avert your gaze let your heart open see feel and then what courage is asked of you you can know yes when compassion arises compassion is a verb it also says i must i will i find a way to make a difference now tiknot han from the mahayana tradition of vietnam teaches these three characteristics he calls him the three seals and instead of teaching dukkha he teaches nirvana because knowing dukkha is the gateway to nirvana to freedom or peace as zen master suzuki roshi who founded san francisco's end center said when you realize the fact that everything changes so now we're going back to anita and loss in dukkha when you realize the fact that everything changes and find your composure in it there you find yourself in nirvana nirvana isn't someplace else it is the freedom and the peace that's available to you with a quiet mind and an open heart when you become the loving witness of it all and then pain is inevitable but suffering is not you can rest in loving awareness and joy we can get so loyal to our suffering and forget that joy that joy i like to talk about of the books of the dalai lama and archbishop tutu laughing and joking the book of joy so dukkha gives birth to the great heart of compassion and then the last of three's three is anata which is translated as sometimes shunyatu is emptiness no self no separate self this is the hardest one to understand but you could sort of feel it when we were meditating together and i said now who are you toward the end look and you look and you don't find yourself there's the sensations and thoughts and experiences and there is awareness but it's not your awareness in fact you're not even there exactly there's just awareness itself nothing separate wes niskar my colleague and friend at spirit rock puts it this way he's a humorist as well he said here's the three characteristics life's hard it'll put you through changes don't take it personally and this is the third hanata that it's not yours the profound reality the invitation to step out of the fiction of separateness what's called the small sense of self or the body of fear where we get frightened or selfish or self-centered or cut off all of those things alice walker wrote one day when i was sitting there like a motherless child which i was it come to me that feeling of being a part of everything and i knew if i cut a tree my arm would bleed i laugh and i cry and i run all around the house when it happens you just can't miss it and we know this walking in the high mountains or making love or being there at the mystery of the birth of a child or the death of a human being silent like a falling star and all of a sudden we step out of the time-bound consciousness the separateness and feel ourselves part of the turning of the seasons of life you feel it on retreat you're doing walking meditation and all of a sudden you realize you're not doing it it's all just doing it itself it's amazing no self as one of my teachers said no self no problem more self more clinging more self centered more problem but it's like this when i look at my daughter she was born of an egg carried by her mother but the egg that was carried by her mother was actually there in her grandmother's body when her mother was an infant in her mother's womb the grandmother's womb carried the egg that became my daughter and then my daughter grows up as a woman and she has a child maybe she has a daughter she has a son now maybe she'll have a daughter we don't know who become a mother and grandmother and the eggs are there a couple of generations before and after we are not ourselves we are the whole chain of being and in one apple is the mystery of life that tree doesn't grow without the rhizomes underneath it in the forest floor and the you know the sunlight on the leaves and the the wind and the turning of seasons and the the the planting and the harvesting in an apple orchard or before that in the wild apples and the chlorophyll that turns sunlight into sugar now how's that for a miracle we live on a planet where light turns into sugar so you can be happy the biosphere the genetics of an apple and all of it's just happening baby this is selfless this is the form of life coming out of consciousness itself and expanding and opening in all these remarkable multitudinous ways and then a man came up to the buddha and said his name was mogarajan and he asked him a question three times when you asked three times that the buddha has to answer as it said he said tell me o blessed one you are to be supposed to be wise how can i live so that i will not be seen by the king of death and the buddha responded o mogarashan do not cling to anything as being yours alone as being self or i or mine and if you know do not cling to anything as self you will not be seen by the king of death so this is the invitation tiknot han talked about the seal of nirvana of freedom the timeless freedom that is who you really are when you don't cling to your body your feelings your relationships the things around you and understand when i say don't cling i don't mean don't care you know the difference you'll feel it in your body between attachment and love they're really different and you can live in the timeless present the consciousness of loving awareness itself and i remember my time with nisargadat this great guru in bombay where he said at one point my consciousness can enter into anything and i can feel the experience of it because it's all consciousness said when i understand when i understood wisdom sees that i am nothing love sees that i am everything and between these two my life flows i loved watching ramadas in the last years of his life because he was there in that wheelchair in a broken body where he couldn't move one arm and one leg where he had aphasia and he couldn't really speak fluently he grappled to find words he had multiple infections and physical traumas and bed sores at times and all these things he was about the happiest person i've been with ever really joyful amidst all the paralysis and aphasia how can you be so joyful ramnas and he said i am loving awareness i love it all i love it all the joy the sorrow the birth the death the spring and the winter so when you understand there comes this beautiful sense of freedom this is our incarnation and then from the little prince antoine de santa super he says first thing in the morning you look after yourself you brush your teeth and wash your face don't you well the second thing you must do is look after your planet it's not that complicated and the heart changes when we come to terms with change and nietzsche and realize oh we can trust that it wants to renew itself and we come to terms with dukkha and say yes that's part of incarnation you don't get out of it loss and change and pain and suffering and gain and pleasure all are woven together i don't know whether nice people tend to grow roses or whether growing roses makes people nice and i don't know the answer either but i do know there's a kind of joy that comes when we see with the eyes of wisdom and the great heart of compassion and trust oh nobly born remember this teaching for now and forever and as you know then you touch it spills out of you your joy your peace your acceptance your flexibility your non-rigidity your openness even with your own foibles like i do with mine and all of those things all held in the great heart of compassion and you become like those people in the tire store waiting room you be upon part of the communion of us of the open heart of life and this is possible for you alice walker says war will stop when we no longer praise it or give it any attention at all peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited love will overflow every sanctuary given it truth will grow where the fertilizer that nourishes it is also truth and trust will be its own reward teach yourself peace pass it on