Rev. Chikyo Ewan Magie: The Hidden Lamp (class 6 of 6)

Rev. Chikyo Ewan Magie's Fall 2024 class on the Hidden Lamp concludes (6 of 6).

Transcript

All right, welcome again, everyone, to Ferry Mountain Zen Center.

This is our sixth and final class of our fall 2024 class on The Hidden Lamp,

stories from 25 centuries of awakened women.

And before I dive into the talk

tonight, because we're going to have some commentary from Joan Sutherland.

And at the beginning of this class, we looked at her book, Through Forests of

Every Color, this beautiful book, Awakening with Koans.

So I thought I'd just read the opening again from her introduction.

She starts with this four-line poem that's attributed to Dongshan, the great Zen master.

For whom do you bathe and make yourself beautiful?

The voice of the cuckoo is calling you home.

Hundreds of flowers fall, but her cry never ends.

Still clear, even in the wildest mountains.

Wonderful epigraph called Honoring from a far longer Chinese poem made of koans

about the journey home and then about home itself.

Here's the poem again. For whom do you bathe and make yourself beautiful?

The voice of the cuckoo is calling you home.

Hundreds of flowers fall, but her cry never ends.

Still clear, even in the wildest mountains.

She says, honoring seems like a good place to begin.

You enter koans through the door of your own life, opening into the world around you.

Honored first is your yearning, the preparation made on faith that there is

something that will receive you if you make yourself ready.

Bathed attended to washed free

of complications and then

aspiring to the deepest kind of beauty receptive

brave dedicated open-hearted already you've begun to look like the thing you

are looking for it's quite a lovely opening paragraph she goes on to say then

and here's perhaps the most important part.

You don't have to make this journey happen. You just have to listen because

home is already calling you.

Flowers fall, which is a way that the ancients had of saying, time passes.

And the call is always present.

Even in the wildernesses of your life, the most confused and lost times.

The call is clear if you can listen for it.

In Chinese legend, the cuckoo will call until her throat bleeds and turns the azaleas red.

The way to honor the mystery of the world's perseverance on our behalf is by

hearing it and responding.

The way to honor the world's mystery of its perseverance on our behalf is by

hearing it and responding.

And she concludes this little introductory section by saying,

Koans connect us with this larger life, the river under the river,

the earth's deeper interconnected rhythms flowing without end beneath and through it all.

We sometimes lose sight of this amid the concerns of our ordinary days.

They make us permeable to the joys and anguish of this life, the koans do.

And permeable to the ways we are made of and contribute to the collective dream

of the world, permeable to the primordial mystery we glimpse behind the veil of the everyday.

But the purpose of realizing this mystery,

as Chinese Chan teacher Deshan said, is to break through to grasp an ordinary

person's life, to come full circle so that we might wholeheartedly ask,

how can I help?

So that's a good little preamble from Joan Sutherland, because tonight in class

six, we're looking at the story of Leng Zhao's helping.

She is the daughter in the famous Laman Pang family, or Pang family,

a layman and laywoman Peng, and their daughter is Ling Zhao,

and her own awakening into what she calls helping.

And there are, of course, lots of ways to work with the koan, interpret the koan,

but certainly we encounter it after knowing the traditional story of Buddha

as a kind of hero's awakening alone.

But Ling Zhao is always in the context of her mother and her father.

They have this kind of lovely triangle of awakened beings that is their family.

And so Ling Zhao's very presence raises the question about this solo spiritual hero narrative.

So...

Lingxiao's helping is really one of the most salient of the koans or ancestor stories.

It focuses on a key element, our desire to help others and our understanding of self and other.

Her shocking fall surprises even her father, the redoubtable Laman Pang.

In fact, it seems like it might be the opposite of helping, since she falls

down suddenly, and yet it expresses a profound solidarity.

As Joan Sutherland explains in brief in her modern commentary, we are all falling.

And so Ling Zhao's sudden unexpected fall emphasizes this reality.

Like many Zen koans, this one takes something familiar and presents it in a

surprising, even shocking form.

So we look at it differently, reflect on what it is to fall or to hell.

Fundamentally, Buddhism examines how we suffer in our perceptions as separate selves.

Our perception as limited selves orients us towards division Towards feeling

alone, feeling isolated,

solitary As individuals in a world of other isolated,

separate, individual beings When we perceive separation in this typical human

way Our sense of personal urgency arises,

And we question our human agency, as we'll see when we reflect on the Bodhisattva

vows, right? Beings are numberless.

I vow to save them, right? So even in our very first Bodhisattva vow is this

sort of overwhelming task.

Okay, I'm identifying now as Bodhisattva.

I'm on the Bodhisattva path, and I'm going to save all beings,

whatever that might mean.

And beings are numberless, right? So how can we possibly do this, right?

So sometimes these are understood as the four great impossible vows.

And certainly, as our feeling of limited self, individual solitary self, it seems impossible.

And so then we feel keenly distinct that we might need some help if we were to fulfill this task.

Like maybe we can get some other buddy Bodhisattvas to join us if we're really going to get there.

And so in

some respect this feeling distinct and separate

is the biggest source for our deeply seated view of a separate limited self

there's so much in the world that's overwhelming and all of this is intuitively

connected to our mortal being our fears that we are not doing enough,

not helping enough, not doing enough, not worthy enough, and of course,

we're mortal, so how can we get it all done?

And so we have this sense of feeling inadequate in helping others,

potentially, and yet Joan Sutherland goes on to point out that Ling Zhao's action

obliterates the idea that there's a helper and a helped.

All right, so however much of the time in this mortal life that we see it from

the view of our separate selves.

Like we might in the case of a sick or dying person and their helper,

or like a family member or a nurse.

So right now I am laboring to settle my Aunt Lynn's estate. I think I told you

that she passed away on 14th of October, so that's an even month ago.

She used the medical assist in dying, or MAID, because she had a terminal cancer.

And she had watched her own mother die in a lot of agony and pain from a very similar cancer.

And she didn't want to let it linger any longer.

Um, so I'm in this helper role, um, and I naturally am feeling inadequate.

Uh, I've never really done anything quite like this, um, being the executor,

but also it's interwoven with the emotions that I'm feeling.

Cause I was there when Lynn passed on the 14th and it was this very strange,

uh, partly wonderful and partly strange occasion where we all got together in her lovely home and,

loved ones gathered around.

And for part of the time, it seemed like a really.

Normal social occasion, people sitting around having cups of tea and laughing and sharing stories.

And, and then at one point she drank this little cup, uh, with the assistance

of the, um, end of life, Washington person, whose name was Gretchen.

And, um, and she even narrated how she was feeling, you know,

she was like, well, I'm getting a little sleepy now.

And, you know, it sounds kind of creepy, but on the one hand,

it was actually really beautiful because everyone was so helpful and so full of love.

And Lynn was even still joking around. She was saying things like,

well, you know, I want to give away all my stuff here, but I know that all of

my friends here are old and they're trying to give away their stuff.

So even up to her last breath, she still had this really great sense of humor.

And so at any rate,

there is kind of a simultaneous acknowledgement that the living may often or

even always feel inadequate in expressing this sort of boundless dimensions

of a dearly beloved human life.

How can I possibly share all of what she was, even though I have some things

now of hers here in my home, her little crystal ball and a few other things,

books of hers. And, um.

And, you know, she was also a long, persisting mentor of mine,

one who absolutely inspired my life in being a teacher and in literature.

And I know that she will always inspire me.

So returning to Joan Sutherland's ideas or commentary and to some fundamental

Buddhist ideas, When we experience this kind of profound family loss,

it's one that can help us open into a more spacious understanding and acceptance

that transcends self and other.

So in that respect, I feel like I'm getting a big teaching. I had one older

Zen teacher encourage me, pay close attention to Lynn's last teaching.

So even though she wasn't a Zen practitioner, I think I'm still absorbing all those last teachings.

And so like Roshi Jones' comment on the helper on one hand and the helped on the other.

We have a similar chant that we do in the Soto Zen meal chant where we say now

we set out Buddha's bowls may we with all beings realize the emptiness of the three wheels giver,

receiver, and gift,

and so in this respect the gifts are going back and forth,

and who is the receiver and who is the giver, who is the help, who is the helper.

So for me, I thought these things came together quite neatly as I thought about

Ling Zhao and her helping.

From a core Zen Buddhist perspective, emptiness is at the core of our practice.

But it is not, contrary to Western misperception, an empty sense of empty of

meaning or empty of significance or of intimate connection.

Rather, in the Zen sense, emptiness is an expression of what Thich Nhat Hanh would call interbeing.

Is this emptiness in this sense, which is profoundly interrelational to the

point where we are never alone.

Even though we may perceive it that way, always we are intimately related,

completely interwoven with others, our parents, our families,

our friends our colleagues, our societies, our cultures,

and you can test this out by going and sitting Zazen on a nearby mountaintop.

Go ahead and try it out sometime.

And the thing that we find out is that all of that cultural knowledge and interrelated

intimate knowledge and awareness is within us.

We carry it wherever we go.

As Dogen said, it is never apart from one, right where one is,

this immensity of our Buddha nature.

So most importantly, our limited small self, who often feels isolated, separated, and alone,

is interwoven completely with this big ultimate Buddha nature self.

And it is this big Buddha nature cell that we need to call upon to care for

our limited selves with compassion and wisdom.

When we suffer these kinds of transitions and difficulties, Laman Pang and his

family can seem a bit problematic because they already seem so enlightened and untroubled.

They're almost a little too perfect, but they are funny, like Lingxiao when

she throws herself down.

So in some respects, they can seem a bit distant from our bumbling everyday

reality because they seem so free from suffering, a suffering that many of us feel and return to.

So it's true, we need role models for enlightened behavior and speech,

but we often relate more directly on an emotional level with characters or persons

we see struggling in similar ways.

And that's kind of the poignancy of the poem at the beginning,

right, that I shared from Roshi Joan, that he's from Dongshan.

For whom do you bathe and make yourself beautiful?

The voice of the cuckoo is calling you home.

Hundreds of flowers fall, but her cry never ends.

Still clear, even in the wildest mountains.

So we know that flowers fall. Things are impermanent, always changing.

We can't stop the living from dying.

We can't stop the sorrowful cry.

And we do have these wildernesses in our lives.

So this is why Ling Zhao's helping focuses on our ideas of helping.

What does it mean to help, after all, given emptiness?

And so again, to present the Bodhisattva vows, we can see that question is embedded in there.

Beings are numberless. I vow to save them.

Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them.

Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them.

Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it.

Now, on the surface, the vows seem straightforward as the expression of the

spiritual hero or warrior.

These four great impossible vows, as I called them earlier, manifest as a kind

of heroic undertaking that we will renew each day when we chant them.

And yet, on another level, there are no separate beings, given emptiness.

And therefore, there are no beings, exactly no beings, to save.

So how could the Baos be impossible then?

So given our Buddha Dharma and the fundamental understandings of this absolute

Buddha nature self, all beings are suffused with Buddha nature.

Which is to say emptiness, which is to say existing always within Indra's vast

net, completely interconnected, or with Thich Nhat Hanh, interbeing.

This is one reason we sit Zazen.

The equanimity we experience in Samadhi, deep in Zazen, expresses this emptiness, this interbeing.

We sit in silence, in stillness.

Or in one Zen expression, sit like cold ash, just so.

We sit so deeply that you realize there is nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Or as Aya Kama puts it in her book title Being Nobody, Going Nowhere.

And yet, much of the time, we are stuck in limited self and overwhelmed with the sense we must help.

We have to intervene somehow or the world or another person will suffer terribly.

And this is really a huge issue for us in the Western world because we deeply

believe in action. And we often are critical of passivity or of inaction.

Sometimes people will turn to you as a Buddhist maybe and say,

oh, you're navel-gazing again.

You're just staring at your navel.

Why aren't you out doing anything? So this notion can really pervade.

And so often we internalize the helper. That sense of inner self that self assigns

a role to intercede wherever and whenever.

And in Zen, this can be highly problematic.

Because when we go on Sashin, each person has her or his own practice.

You can't sit on the cushion in Zazen for someone else, and you're explicitly

instructed, do your own job. Don't do anyone else's job.

And yet probably when you're in Sashin, you'll see someone else messing up their job or not doing it.

Like when I fell asleep when I was at Tassajara and I was running late to do

my job, ringing the bell.

But fortunately, there are a lot of awakened people there and someone rang the

bell before I could get up the stairs and do it. stealing my job.

So it goes.

But to intercede in this way or help can interrupt the spiritual journey of that other person.

And so from a Zen perspective, we can interrupt the very spiritual process that

those persons came to practice to engage in.

So there's really this need for being upright, as Reb Anderson calls it in his book, right?

That we, it's not that we never help, but we're disciplined in the degree to

which and the manner in which we might offer help.

And so, although we may not be aware consciously,

aware that we sought out Zen specifically to unfold a spiritual process of transformation,

At a certain level, we do intuit this when we go to temple or go on retreat.

It is very hard. We intuitively try to help.

And therefore, often we over-assign ourselves to this role, even in small ways,

like handing somebody their coffee cup.

It's subtle, these little interventions.

And so we often cross into the territory of others and do so for a variety of human reasons.

Perhaps we were assigned this role as a child by our parents,

or we took to it as an older sibling,

or maybe we have this role as a parent, helping our children.

Perhaps we assigned ourselves this role, thinking we were the only ones who could do it properly.

And perhaps we self-assign this role because it gives us profound sense of self-worth,

without which we might feel lost or unsure of ourselves.

In other words, the role of helper is a complex and nuanced one in human life.

It can be as ego-driven and self-centered, even though on the surface it appears

to be selfless and in the service of others.

And so, therefore, Ling Zhao's helping is a hugely important koan for our reflection.

To what degree are we truly selfless in our helping, we might ask?

And to what degree are we driven by egotistical elements that we did not see before?

So it's helpful to recall our youth and adolescence when we might have developed

ourselves into this role.

Important to acknowledge the capacity of early experiences to shape our consciousness

and orientation in this life.

And this is part of the value of Zen, the value of Zazen.

As we sit more and more, we let go more and more fully from this old,

long-established conditioning.

But this letting go does not happen simply because we will it to happen or because

we throw a switch or a lever that shifts the machinery of our inner life.

But rather we settle into the stillness and the silence that allows old patterns to drop away.

And then the discipline of Zen holds us like a container.

And so in that, we can see the strong desire behind our desire to help.

We can examine it sort of objectively.

This is the great merit of the Buddha posture, being upright.

We're still vulnerable. We still have our feelings.

But we're calm and grounded and centered on the earth, allowing the truth to

arise and for us to see it clearly.

We can see there can be a desire for personal significance and meaning that

can be driven by the gratification arising when we are thanked or appreciated

by others whom we helped.

And so our absolute self can see how helping was shaped and guided.

When we really become quiet enough, we can see this old self more honestly and

clearly at the heart of spiritual practice there is an enduring need for radical

honesty radical acceptance as Tara Brach,

the Vipassana teacher expresses,

and so it's important that we practice the 16 Bodhisattva precepts especially

ethics or sila as expressed in the six perfections or paramitas as we practice our Soto Zen.

And this is especially important in relationship to our work, our helping.

Naturally, at times we work collaboratively. Other times we work alone,

like sweeping the floor.

And so this discussion, it must be said, does not mean that we eliminate all efforts to help.

Rather, it asks us to respect each practitioner's path.

To understand that their own openings and awakenings may require some solitude,

protected by the structure, the container of practice.

And there may even be some degrees of personal suffering as the transformation unfolds.

So this can be difficult, which is another reason that reveals how apt is Ling Zhao's fall.

She falls intentionally in solidarity with her father, as we said.

The great Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche once said,

The bad news is that you're falling.

The good news is there is no ground.

By which he meant we are falling through emptiness always, right?

And he spoke his teaching with this sense of interbeing that there is no ground,

there are no beings to save. We are all in Indra's web already.

So the perspective that Ling Zhao orients us toward is radical in its nature.

It does not say that we never suffer.

In fact, maybe she skinned her knee when she fell down in front of her dad.

It does not say that we won't experience emotional pain when those we love pass

away and die, and we're left there helping inadequately.

It does widen our perspective, though, in profound ways so that we can understand

the expansive vision within which Buddhism invites us to engage.

We are not separate.

We help and we respect the autonomy of others and their deep desire to awaken

into emptiness, into that sweeping radical freedom.

In one of the other koans in the book with Lingzhao, Lingzhao's Shining Grasses, this is on page 271.

She raises another idea.

In fact, it's her father who first brings up a saying, difficult, difficult, difficult.

As Joan Southeron reveals, his cry is not about the subtlety of the sutras.

It's rather about the difficulty of living.

Life in a human body is endlessly complex, seething with thorns and tangles,

erupting with love and tenderness.

By contrast, laywoman Peng is at her ease, grounded in her life on earth and in her Zen practice.

Easy, easy, easy, she says in response.

But their daughter, Ling Zhao, who is the synthesis of her two parents,

guides us to understand what Dogen calls practice enlightenment.

And she states, neither difficult nor easy.

It's like the teachings of the ancestors shining on the hundred grass tips.

To conclude, Sutherland observes, it is crucial to know our undivided nature.

That is, our Buddha nature.

It takes committed practice, our daily Zazen carried everywhere with us like a shadow or a friend,

to meet what arises in this very human life with wholehearted compassion and

spacious wisdom as we continue practicing together our practice enlightenment.

Thank you.