IMG_5.jpg

The Eight Offerings: a practice for cultivating flexibility and ‘give’

by Tarchin on February 22, 2012

by Tarchin Hearn

 

(This essay was originally written and shared as an e-mail article in 2004.  It has been slightly modified for Green Dharma Treasury)

All of nature, in fact the entire living world, is a dance of continuous offering; one thing giving itself to another.  Rain moistening ground and ground water evaporating and birthing clouds.  Sunlight energising plants and plants modifying sunlight.  Creatures being food for others who, in turn, become food for yet others.  Parents caring for children and children caring for parents.  Giving and receiving.  Receiving and giving.  These flows of transformation comprise the ungraspable substance and beingness of everything and everyone.  From a Buddhist perspective, one could say that the entire path of awakening revolves around recognising, and releasing into, this spontaneous fluidity of responsive exchange.  All newness is generated from this dancing ‘generosity’.

In contrast, we might be facing a starkness of pain and suffering, anguish and worry, plotting and planning, the chaos of terror and the dreaming of security; these all too common energies, help to craft a frozen world of forgetfulness; a way of living that seems oblivious to the dynamic creative multi-weaving processes of generosity and generation that we are.

How can we thaw?
How can we soften?
How can we make the brittle more malleable and the stiff both warm and flexible,
– full of give –
– more giving?
This is a perennial question.  It is perhaps the fundamental challenge of living.

Most religions have practices that encourage the cultivation of generosity.  In the Tibetan tradition, especially in what are called the lower tantras, there are many public displays that involve making extensive and elaborate offerings.  Thousands of butter lamps, bowls of water, flowers, food and so forth, are stacked up in front of statues or paintings of the Buddha.  In Southeast Asia the temples are filled with offerings, often given by people who are materially very poor.  In 2001, we were travelling in Myanmar where it was explained to us that by making offerings, people were “accumulating merit”.  By giving as much as they could today, they hoped to be born wealthy in a future life.  This is the point where many western Buddhists can begin to experience flutterings of doubt and disconnect.  Psychologically, it seems too much like trying to bribe or placate ‘the deities’, not to mention looking like a very convenient way of financing the monasteries.  Undoubtedly, when in the flow of religious devotion, these rituals of giving can be very uplifting, but when you are exercising your intellect and capacity for critical thinking, you might find yourself wondering, what this religious tinsel and decoration has to do with the cultivation of mindfulness, awareness, and wise, compassionate activity?   Many people, I have spoken to, prefer to dispense with all ritual.  ‘It might be okay for those people, it’s part of their culture, but we need a practice that is in harmony with our culture.’

Actually, some of the things that are in harmony with our culture are quite bleak.  A culture is a growth medium – think of petri dishes or yogurt culture.  The one I grew up in, (and probably the one you grew up in), is a culture that is massively engaged in consumerism.  It is a culture dedicated to establishing and maintaining one’s identity on the basis of what one owns and also, on the degree to which one can control the material world.  Our sense of self is amazingly tied up with acquisition – whether it be of things or knowledge.  Success is commonly defined on the basis of having lots of stuff and lots of control.  We live and grow in a culture of grasping and self interest; a tragic mix of fantastic material wealth often running hand in hand with mindsets of poverty.  It seems ironic that in the midst of so much ‘plenty’ there is often a pervasive feeling of ‘never enough’, coupled with fear of loosing what we do have.  All of this yearning, striving and fearing contributes to an inflexibility, a lack of give; a stiffness in body, speech and mind that warps our ability to respond to others in creative, live-affirming ways.

In classical Buddhist teaching, the antidote to greed, self interest and compulsive grasping involves the cultivation of generosity; the intentional practice of giving and offering.  Here we can begin to understand the Burmese belief that by giving to the temple, they are ‘accumulating merit’.  The Sanskrit word punya, is  commonly translated as meritorious, auspicious or virtuous.  According to Namgyal Rinpoché, an inner meaning of punya is ‘power’.  ‘Accumulating merit’, through the practice of generosity, means to accumulate, or cultivate, or generate healthy energy; a powerful ability to compassionately, responsively and skilfully live in, and as, this constantly changing present-mystery of what is.

Just as an engineer or architect considers the degree of ‘give’ or flexibility in the materials they use for a bridge or a building, thus ensuring that it can gently flex and bend in response to wind and earthquake – a brittle structure might fracture and fall down – so too, we practice ‘give’ or ‘giving’ in order to help cultivate a wider and more subtle range of responsiveness, so that we can move well with any situation or circumstance.  This responsive moving is the fundamental language, or languaging, of all relationship and communal living.

In the teachings of Vajrayana Buddhism, there are eight traditional offerings: water for drinking, water for washing the feet, flowers, incense, light, perfumes, food, and music or sound.  Each day, and sometimes many times a day, these would be offered to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, (or to other symbols that, for the practitioner, represent the blossoming of wisdom and compassion) .  At the deepest level, these offerings can be profoundly liberating practices that have little to do with giving flowers and incense to brass statues or paintings, or even living teachers.  The Buddha really doesn’t need water and candles and incense.  Liberation can’t be bought for 100,000 butter lamps!

The eight offerings represent inner qualities of being that we aspire to cultivate and bring forth into the world through the various activities of our body, speech and mind.  Although this process is often enacted in real and tangible ways – so many bowls of water and so many sticks of incense – this offering practice can become a yoga or a sadhana which has the power to profoundly transform the way we live.  By cultivating the essential meaning hinted at by these eight symbols, we remind ourselves of what is truly valuable.  Loosening the strings of attachment, and resting with increasing confidence in an inexhaustible flow of mutual shaping and support, we gradually recognise and appreciate the real wealth that is in all of us.  Entering this vast flow of offering is the heart and vitality of true empowerment.  It is naturally discoverable in any situation or circumstance.

The following words are written in the first person.  Please take them to heart and make them your own.  This is you speaking – whisperings of encouragement from your own wellspring of intuition and deep understanding.  See if you can allow the intent behind these images to flower in the midst of your on-going direct experience.

 

A Practice of Eight Offerings

I rest at ease, enjoying the flow of my breathing.  Within me and around me is the shrine of the world – a monastery of becoming.  The clouds in the sky, the rabbits on the lawn, the meditators in their huts, the birds singing bell-like in the bush, the river rushing in the valley, the farmer bringing in the cows for milking, this is where I am.  (Open your senses to appreciate the specific situation and circumstances of where you are.  Relish the detail and marinate in the fullness of the scene around you.)

I feel the presence of my mentors and teachers inspiring awakening in the marrow of my being.  I sense my ancestors, a river of talent flowing through the changing landscapes of time.  I rest in the immense ecology of this living world, breathing with a matrix of beings and being.  I pray for the well-fare of all of you and make offerings to give myself away.

To all of you, teachers, ancestors and the immeasurable matrix of life, I offer water for drinking.  Crystal water flowing through my body purifying the sense doors.  Cleansing my seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and mental activity so that I can meet the world, just as it is, to be utterly present and compassionately responsive to every arising object, whether inner or outer, animate or inanimate.  To offer water for drinking is to flood the entire of being with the fluid bliss of seeing clearly without judgment, of hearing without confusion, of touching with wonderment and curiosity, of smelling with vast sensitivity, of tasting with fine and subtle discrimination, of remembering, emotioning, thinking, and conceptualising whilst clearly knowing that this is what is happening.  This is the offering of water for drinking and I offer it without attachment.

To all of you, teachers, ancestors and the immeasurable matrix of life, I offer water for washing the feet.  This represents the purification and nourishing of the foundation of motivation, my heart/foundation (and feet) of awakening (bodhicitta).  The act of purifying is the act of hundred percenting, the act of being utterly present, giving all of my attention to whatever is arising.  Instead of a chaos of conflicting projects, whirlwinds of hopes and fears that churn the ocean of my life, through washing the mud from my feet I reveal a mystery of awakening that is already in process.  I nourish a deepening appreciation for the interdependency of everything and feel a conscious determination to unfold myriad talents and good qualities in order to help all beings flourish in this tapestry of awakening star dust that is our living world.  This is the offering water for washing the feet and I offer it without attachment.

To all of you, teachers, ancestors and the immeasurable matrix of life, I offer flowers, mysteries of living beauty.  Not dead plants, not style or fashion, but the natural beauty that shines forth when we feel utterly in tune, when the inner and the outer mesh together in a harmonious burst of creativity birthing newness into the world for others.  Ultimately, offering flowers is to offer the beauty of buddhahood, the flowering of wisdom and compassion, tolerance and kindness, the budding, the bodhi, the buddha that is everyone’s very nature shining forth and functioning well through body, speech and mind.  I offer the flowering beauty of my life and I offer it without attachment.

To all of you, teachers, ancestors and the immeasurable matrix of life, I offer an immense cloud of incense, the incense of pure moral conduct, scenting each activity of my body, speech and mind.  Appreciating and supporting life, cultivating a mind of spontaneous generosity, actively using the senses to explore the world, communicating skilfully and compassionately, and nourishing myself and all beings in ways that support awakening; all these actions pervading my relationships with people, animals, plants and landscapes, with micro beings too small to see  and macro beings beyond my comprehension, with inner thoughts and feelings and memories, with each and every facet of this vast dance of life.  To offer incense is to perfume every action with love, compassion, clear seeing and deepening understanding.  May the activities of my body, speech and mind become perfume for all that I meet.  This is the offering of incense and I offer it without attachment.

To all of you, teachers, ancestors and the immeasurable matrix of life, I offer light, not merely candles or butter lamps, but the illumination of wisdom; knowing with appreciative understanding the profound interconnectedness and interdependence of everything and everyone.  Just as the light from one candle can ignite another, so the natural play of broad and inclusive continuously fresh awareness, awakens others to broad loving inclusiveness and this in turn awaken others; a fire of love and understanding spreading in every direction.  Dwelling in the domain of the all embracive, I offer the light of deepening wisdom.  May all beings shine forth illuminating the best in each other.  This is the offering of light and I offer it without attachment.

To all of you, teachers, ancestors and the immeasurable matrix of life, I offer the perfume of sincere devotion.  This is an offering of love and support for all that is wholesome, perfuming each moment with immense energy; a heart felt commitment to uplift beings. Devotion to truth.  Devotion to honesty.  Devotion to compassion.  Devotion to questioning and exploring freely. Devotion to looking deeply into whatever is arising and then to living according to the implications of what is discovered.  May all beings enhance the world with the perfume of total engagement flowing from a fearless heart.  This is the offering of perfume and I offer it without attachment.

To all of you, teachers, ancestors and the immeasurable matrix of life, I offer a banquet of food.  This represents abundance, an abundance of talents, interests and engagements all laid out as a magnificent feast to feed beings, each according to their needs.  I offer the food of delight which comes from living in accord with dharma.  I offer the food of samadhi, the harmonizing of body and mind through meditation.  I offer the food of prajña, the wisdom of seeing through the illusion of separateness.  May the activities of my body, speech and mind become a banquet for all beings.  This is the offering of the food of abundance and I offer it without attachment.

To all of you, teachers, ancestors and the immeasurable matrix of life, I offer music, the voice of Dharma, a symphony of teaching, encouraging, cajoling, inspiring, instructing, humouring, reasoning, uplifting and, demonstrating through the voice of silent action.  I offer the wonderful rhythms, harmonies, syncopations and surprises, the music of heart and mind functioning beautifully, singing the song of awakening to all and with all that I meet.  This is the offering of music and I offer it to all without attachment.

Standing in the midst of this miracle of being,
I offer all that I am and all that I have.

E, MA,  HOH!

Resting in a beginningless endless stream of offering;
parent to child, child to parent,
teacher to student, student to teacher,
friend to friend and friends to friends,
creature to creature, being to being,
this is a yoga/sadhana of eight offerings, a celebration of life.
May I carry it through every situation of the coming day.

These prayers of offering contain whispers of ancient wisdom from the treasury of a multitude of cultures.  Reflect on them again and again until they become inseparably braided into the cloth of your life.  Please take this practice and make it your own.  Find your own words to call forth the essence in an intimate and personal way.  Bring to life the meaning behind the words and manifest it in the market place, the current shrine of global culture.

May all of us together dissolve the madness of
desperate grasping, with the solvent of remembering,
releasing into the vast flow of giving and receiving –
a sentient volume of time and space
weaving meaning, and empathy,
and understanding,
in the living loom of now.

SARVA MANGALAM

Note:
A slightly different version of this meditation called “The Yoga of Eight Offerings” can be found in the Green Dharma Treasury collection
under ‘Writings/Practices’.

© Tarchin Hearn 2012

{ 0 comments }

Commonsense Retreat by Tarchin Hearn

by Tarchin on January 23, 2012

We are pleased to announce the availability of a free PDF, e-book version of Tarchin’s recently revised ‘Commonsense Retreat’

‘Commonsense Retreat’ is a small booklet introducing some broadly practical considerations that will help support a solitary retreat.  It was originally written in 1984 to help introduce people to the use of retreat huts at the Wangapeka Study and Retreat Centre in N.Z.  Though based on general Buddhist principles, it will speak to people from a wide range of traditions and backgrounds.  It touches on themes such as one’s motivation for retreating, basic preparation, the environment or place for retreat, physical health, diet, basic mindfulness practice, and how to smoothly emerge from retreat.

Click the link to download the entire 10 page booklet, Commonsense Retreat PDF or, visit Green Dharma Treasury and go to the section, Writings/E-Books.

{ 0 comments }

A Four-fold Practice for Living Well – Stopping, Calming, Resting, Healing –

by Tarchin on January 21, 2012

‘A Four-fold Practice for Living Well’ was originally part of a letter written for some dharma friends who had drifted into relationship difficulties with each other.

In Buddhist teaching, it is said that truth, or dharma, is good in the beginning, good in the middle and good at the end.  Here is a fundamental dharma practice that I initially learned from Thich Nhat Hanh.  I find it inspiring at many levels, from pragmatically useful to profoundly encouraging and affirming.  It is definitely good in the beginning, in that it can help us deal with difficulties that crop up in our day to day lives.  It is good in the middle in that it can remind us of the central work of awakening even as we engage in an expanding array of dharma practices.  It is good right through to the end as it brings us back to the simplicity and straight forwardness of the path, and a life well lived.  The practice can be summarized in four words: stopping, calming, resting and healing.

Stopping
If you look into moments when you feel unhappy and not in the flow, when you are distracted and in the grip of difficult energies, you will inevitably find that you are not very present.  Mindfulness is absent.  Whirling in the contradictory breezes of planning, fantasizing, dreaming, and internal dialoging, there is reactive reaching in many directions; into the future, into the past — desperate attempts to make things better.  This is the time to stop.

Stopping means to bring to an end the present state of mindlessness, forgetfulness, scatter and fragmentation.  In stopping, we find ourselves to be richly in the midst of what is happening.  We are exactly where we are; right here in this place; right now at this time.  Think of stopping as if you were stopping by for tea or stopping over for the night, not stopping in the sense of blocking but entering, not bunging up but pausing to richly engage.  We make ourselves at home; opening the six doors of perception and deepening into the immediacy of what is happening within and around us: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching, mingling with the myriad forms of mental activity.

To support this practice, mentally say the word, ‘stopping’.  At the same time, relax into an awareness of your breathing and open your sense doors to where you are.

Open the doors.
Open wide the doors, oh daffodil.
Breathe with it deeply . . .

Calming
Having interrupted the flow of unawareness by stopping, now we begin the work of calming.  This is practiced in five progressive steps.

(1) Recognizing
Supported by your breathing recognize the dominant state that is present for you right in this moment.  It might be anger, frustration, irritation, yearning, or a sense of helplessness.  It could be more neutral, for example, dull, frozen, distracted, or foggy and vague.  It could even be a positive; happy, interested, blissful, or inspired.  Whatever the state, having stopped the flow of unawareness, supported by a rich appreciation of our breathing, recognize the feeling/quality that is most dominantly present.  It can help to simply name it.

(2) Accepting
Sometimes in recognizing a state, particularly if it is a difficult one, we find ourselves trying to push it away.  To deepen the process of calming, having recognized our present state, rather that fighting against it, making excuses for it, justifying it or trying to deny it, we allow ourselves to accept it.  In our stopping, and recognizing, we make space for this state to be.

(3) Embracing
Allowing this state to be present we then open further and embrace it with all our sensitivity, caring, and concern; with all our love and awareness.

(4) Looking deeply
Embracing this state with mindfulness and caring we look more deeply into it.  Listening deeply, smelling deeply, tasting deeply, touching deeply, thinking deeply, reflecting deeply.  Just as we might support a friend who is suffering, by giving them all of our attention and allowing them the space to unfold their own story, so too, embracing our own suffering with kindness and caring, we look deeply into what is happening and allow the actual situation to speak, to reveal itself.

(5) Insight
In the midst of looking deeply, we begin to have fresh, or at least re-freshed, insights and understandings into how such a state has arisen.  These patterns of need in my childhood gave rise to these tendencies to react to certain situations.  This current physical challenge is draining my energies so I react with patterns of anger.  I can see that it is a pattern that has arisen in other similar situations.  Insight is the act of ‘sighting into’ and with it, a fresh and liberating understanding begins to emerge.

Recognizing, accepting, embracing, looking deeply and insight; these five, working together, will nurture the experience of calming.

Resting
Having arrived at a more calm easeful flow of being present with what is occurring, we can then truly begin to cultivate the art of resting.  Our suffering and mindless fragmentation has consumed lots of energy and we now need to use this freshly experienced calm to support a period of rest and revitalization.  Resting, simply refers to proceeding with whatever we need to do with the least expenditure of effort.  This is not the rest of staying in bed and being inactive.  Resting is a steady, gentle, experimental learning of how to do whatever we are doing with minimal effort.  To sit, stand, walk and move with minimal effort.  To think effortlessly.  To work effortlessly.  To engage in conversation and organizing with the least amount of effort.  Gradually we learn the art of resting in the midst of life as we experience it.

Healing
True healing is to experience utter wholeness, pure and total presence in the act of knowing itself.  This is not something we can make happen.  It is not a matter of technique or expertise.  It is not something we can force into being.  It is, however, something that naturally flows out from deep stopping, deep calming and deep resting.  Healing is a mystery, a moment of blessing and grace that reveals itself in the midst of moving mindfully in the fullness of what is.

Stopping, calming, resting, healing.  This four fold practice for living well is straight forward and simple.  It can be useful at any stage of life’s journey.  For beginners it can give a clear sense of how to work with daily experience and how to make one’s life into a path of awakening.  For more experienced practitioners it can be a reminder of the depth and profundity of Buddhist teaching and practice.  For a being dwelling in true spiritual maturity, it can be a companion on the path with whom we walk in joy.

© Tarchin Hearn, Dec. 2011

{ 0 comments }

Reflections on Knowing, Mind and Wonderment

by Tarchin Hearn on November 5, 2011

Oct 5/11 Simpson Desert Australia, 5:30am
Reflections on Knowing, Mind and Wonderment
With thanks to Sue and John for taking us there.
by Tarchin Hearn

I’m sitting on the red earth
gazing into mystery,
camp mat folded under me,
morning coffee steaming by my side.

In front is a young acacia bush.
Its roots are responding to moisture, sand chemistries,
and the lives of subterranean microorganisms.
Each one of these particular biochemical respondings;
a dancing of communion.
Plant collaborating with living earth.
Earth collaborating with plant.
— We could call them forms or ways of knowing.

The sun appears over an immense, flat, desert plain and molecules of chill air are responding to increasing streams of photons. Wind is beginning to stir. Temperatures rise and photosynthesis in grey green leathery leaves strengthens in rhythm and tempo. This changing activity demonstrates yet more forms of knowing. Intelligent respondings. Patterns of orderly connection and interminglement.

The low light illumines tight-ropes of spider web, tugging at leaves and shaping their movement, flexing and shimmering in the sea of light and breeze. A spider hunkers down under a leaf to wait out another period of heat. All these movements and respondings are themselves embodiments of knowing, an interflowing of living experience.

Rainbow bee-eater flashes in from the left and lands on the acacia branch, feathers reflecting sunlight to my eyes; cascades of neural conversations inviting the vastness of my being to see iridescent colour and think; “Good morning, beauty!” Me responding to bee-eater and bee-eater responding to me, and to acacia which is responding to sun and spider. Each moment of responding is a demonstration of knowing. Knowings within knowings shaping knowing; — an ocean of wondrous collaboration

Each being and becoming — a dancing of knowing,
a unique expression,
an immeasurable weaving of unfolding life streams.
This total field of all events and meanings.
This eternal immediacy of local ordinariness,
together considering the question, how should I live?
How do we live?

But wait! You too, dear reader, are also involved.
Widening the doors of empathy,
with exquisite sensitivity,
look around you and feel:
these writings,
the room,
the garden and sky,
the fly exploring the rim of your cup,
the sounds of people, friends and family, all around,
my words dancing patterns in your seeing embrace.
Open into this.
Breathing and appreciating.
A here and now translucent presence.
A seeing and being seen.

This interweaving is what and where you are.
It makes you.
It is you,
and me,
and the crickets,
and the sound of the traffic and the whirr of bee-eater’s wings. We are in it together: molecules, cells, creatures and landscapes. We need each other to function. We mind ourselves and each other into being. The dancing of everyone and everything brings forth a field of knowing, this mind and minding, an ever changing world of everyday mystery — this wonderment that we share.

©Tarchin Hearn Nov/2011

Silence and Retreat

by Tarchin Hearn on September 20, 2011

These words have arisen in response to the many enquiries over the years as to whether or not an upcoming retreat would be held in silence.

Will the retreat be in silence? Actually, if there is silence, the whole universe would have disappeared!  If the retreat is in silence, we will all be in deep trouble.  I expect the birds will continue to sing.  The leaves will rustle in the breeze.  Crickets and frogs will chorus with cicadas and the growing grasses and wild flowers.  The cells of our bodies will continue to converse with each other.  Organs will speak to organs.  Intestinal fungi, flora and fauna will gossip and exchange news.  Will there be silence?  I sincerely hope not.  We will, however, gently and care-fully, encourage ourselves, and each other, to listen deeply to the complex symphony of our lives unfolding responsively in the great togetherness of this living world.

Retreat is a time for so much more than just refraining from talking while engaging in disciplined effort.  Retreat is precious opportunity to cultivate a continuity of patient thorough listening and deep empathic experiencing.  Setting aside our habitual use of verbal communication will support an ambiance in which we can become more sensitive to the wisdom and stories and singings of our bodies and minds, as they commune with the embodied minds of all the other beings that together compose this extraordinary mystery of life.

Many people today float through life in an almost non-stop cacophony of radio, TV, internet, i-pods, cell phones, piped music and person to person talking.  From waking up in the morning to going to sleep at night we are immersed in verbalizing and if none is available, we invent some; filling the gap with internal dialogues, critiques and imagined entertainments.  We don’t quite know what to do when all this chatter stops.  Addictively tuned to the wave length of human language, we risk losing the ancient and life affirming art of appreciating the myriad other non-human communications that are necessary for a healthy living world.  This loss is fast becoming a tsunami of disaster for all of us.

It is understandable that people might feel a bit anxious at the thought of not speaking for a day or so, not to mention a week or a month but you might be surprised –– you may find you enjoy it.  In retreat, even one that honours silence, we inevitably have moments of speaking to our fellow retreaters; sharing in a class, asking for something in the kitchen or garden, but these moments will be simple and straight forward, and a lot less than what we are used to in our normal daily living.

Silence doesn’t have to be anxiety producing.  Rather than signifying a loss of something, an isolation or a cutting off, it could be experienced as a blessing, an invitation to responsive presence.

Like a deep clear pool;
limpid,
lustrous,
and sometimes even seductive,
silence draws us in,
strips us,
revealing jewels of experience that before were hidden in the noise.

Perhaps what we mean by silence is really an experience of harmonious settling; a natural at-oneness; a blending of inner and outer, without conflict or expectation; a manifesting of deep physical and mental acceptance of being at home in the fullness of whatever is occurring –– with presence, dignity and natural grace.  This is the silence of contemplation.  This is the stillness of healing presence.  Traditionally it has been referred to as the ‘noble silence’.  Will it take place in your retreat?  In truth, it’s up to you.

© Tarchin Hearn, Sept. 2011

Education and Buddhadharma

by Tarchin Hearn on August 5, 2011

How do we learn?  How do we grow into mature, loving, wise, competent human beings?  Does our vision of our place in the universe actually correspond to the biological realities that shape us?  Do our religious and moral aspirations harmonize with our mechanical and energetic interactions with the rest of the world?  Where do we find our sense of togetherness?  Where do we humans fit?  Can we discover a way to become, once again, native to this place, this living world, our home.  Can we rediscover our belongingness in life?

Reverencing the great mystery of education
I flex and bend and move in the flow of your unfolding wisdom.
May all beings realise the blessing of profound aliveness
and dance their lives in the flowering of wonderment and love.

The practice of buddhadharma and the process of meaningful education, are deeply related.  Buddhadharma is more commonly associated with Buddhism which, of course, is viewed by many as a religion.  Education is usually associated with secular schooling.  Yet each has something to contribute to the other.  I’d go so far to say that richly developed, each contains the other.

For readers unfamiliar with the term, the Sanskrit word buddhadharma is made up of buddha plus dharma.  The bu in buddha derives from bodhi which means to awaken, to unfold or to flower.  It gave rise to our English word bud, as in flower bud.  The ha part, is the natural sound of laughter, joy, and surprise, which are often outer indications of inner well being and harmonious good functioning.  Buddha therefore means joyful unfolding or awakening or perhaps even the flowering of joy!  Dharma has many meanings such as truth, phenomena and natural law but in Buddhism it is often used in the sense of ‘teaching’.  Broadly speaking, buddhadharma can refer to any teaching or guidance that supports joyful awakening; the unfolding or flowering of joyful good functioning – both in an individual and simultaneously in their surrounding community.

In it’s widest sense, buddhadharma, doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with Buddhism!  I find it useful to make a distinction between buddhadharma and what I sometimes think of as ‘Buddhism-dharma’.  Buddhadharma is universal.  It’s all around us and it becomes visible wherever there is skilful encouragement and opportunity to unfold in compassion, wisdom and awareness.  It can be lived and realised by Christians and Buddhists, by agnostics and atheists.  It has been cultivated by Sufis and scientists, artists and health workers.  Buddhadharma is alive and happening in many different types of communities all over the world.  What I sometimes call ‘Buddhism-dharma’ refers to the teachings of traditional Buddhism.  Hopefully, this Buddhism conveys something of true buddhadharma but sometimes traditions become sidetracked into preserving cultural beliefs and biases that have little to do with cultivating love, freedom and profound understanding, which is surely what good teaching or education should be in aid of.

Education is a process of nurturing, or from a utilitarian point of view, training or conditioning an individual so that he or she can function well in the society in which they live.  The idea of education sometimes carries a sense of preparing young people so that they can contribute to fulfilling the needs of society.  I’m sure many people could agree with these definitions – even the Minister of Education.  Where this becomes tragically limited is in situations where we seem to have a very narrow understanding of society and hence its needs.  The society we are mostly concerned with today is almost inevitably a human one.   The other species we live with barely get a mention.  And even narrower, it is often an exclusive group of humans, ones that share a common set of largely unconscious assumptions, biases and beliefs about the nature of reality.  Today, the majority of us seem to have fallen into a collective amnesia, forgetting that we are part of an immeasurably larger society called a living world; a world of animals, plants, fungi, micro-organisms, river catchments, mountain ranges and plate tectonics.  We are all part of this togetherness, brothers and sisters, neighbours and collaborators, all of us together.  Our lives and the activities of our living, interweave, back and forth, over and under and through each other; this living world, this rich diversity of form and understandings that comprise the very substance of our beingness.

Education shapes society but society also shapes the forms of our education.  What kind of education do we give our children when daily, we collectively and helplessly bow to the god of market forces? . . . when massive amounts of human industry are devoted to building and selling weapons designed solely to kill and maim beings?  . . . when we excuse and condone lies and deceit in politicians and business executives as long as they don’t break any laws?  . . . when nearly everything is measured in terms of money and economic performance, and instant gratification is the hallmark of a successful life?  What kind of education do we support when justice and unpretentious honesty are often dismissed as naive or sometimes even unrealistic idealism?

The second half of the twentieth century saw a quiet yet significant revolution in the healing professions, with a growing acceptance for the idea of treating ‘the whole person’ instead of trying to deal with a collection of disconnected symptoms.  In its more expanded forms, the whole person was seen as something or someone embedded in, or continuous with, their extended family or whanau, with their society, and with the surrounding ecosystem.  Ultimately the whole person is intermeshed with the whole existing world and any approach to healing must take this into account.  The good functioning of an individual is linked to the good functioning of every other living individual.  We desperately need a similar revolution that will expand our understanding and practice of education.

A good starting point would be to recognize that education surely involves much more than just pouring facts and figures into young peoples’ brains.  In the so called modern world, we tend to think of facts and figures as ‘hard data’ when, in truth they are more often just palatable prejudices or currently popular understandings or interpretations, that help to ensure a continuity of societal beliefs and action.  Recently in a BBC interview, NZ’s Prime Minister John Key was confronted with the results of a detailed scientific study that found that many of the rivers and lakes in NZ were significantly polluted.  The interviewer asked why, in the light of this study, NZ was continuing to brand itself as clean and green.  Mr. Key said that people were entitled to their opinions but that he rejected those findings as he could find other ‘experts’, that would give a different opinion which would show that NZ is 100% clean and green.  This is a case of hard data looking more like a Rorschach ink-blot test!

Good education involves so much more than developing the basic literacy and numeracy skills that spokespersons for the ministry of education seem to value as paramount.  Real education, complete education, education in completeness or wholeness, is a process of drawing forth all the qualities that are precious in a human being; for example, the capacity for love and empathy and creative thought, along with courageous straightforwardness.  It cultivates our capacity to be curious about all manifestations of life and to consciously participate in the life affirming shaping of this living world in which we find ourselves.

In practical terms, an education system must always serve the needs of society but we need to have the broad mindedness and honesty to recognise that meaningful society is much bigger and more multidimensional than we usually imagine.  Serving society (as biologist, writer and lover of life, Aldo Leopold, once put it), requires that we support, “the integrity, stability and beauty of the (whole) biotic community”.

Each one of us is born into a vast interweaving of matter, energy and knowing that is already in process.  It’s what we are.  It’s all through us and around us and it has been going on for 13.5 billion years; as it says in some Buddhist texts, since beginningless time, or for incalculable aeons, or inconceivable kalpas.  However expressed, whether with numbers or poetry, there is every indication that the unfolding of life was going on before we as individuals began and will likely continue after we end.

This ‘already happening, ongoing process’ can be seen in two ways.  It is the wholeness or totality of nature, unfolding and diversifying in the direction of increased discernment and knowing, thus nourishing a wider and wider range of unique yet totally intermeshed individuals.  This is evolution in action.  At the same time, this process involves each individual, feeling, with their own particular talents of perception and awareness, towards a lived appreciation of connection, a sense of unity accompanied by an increasing sense of understanding, wonder, devotion, reverence and awe.

Nature diversifying into ever more refined ways of being and knowing, and, individual discernment and knowing intuiting its way into a sense of wholeness and living mystery; this intermingling yin–yang of life is the natural ground from which, and within which, we all emerge and grow.  Going by many names, it is sometimes called God, or Totality, or Wholeness or ‘the pattern that connects’.  In Buddhism it is known as the dharmadhatu, the basic space of phenomenon, the immeasurable expanse of inter-being, or the total field of all events and meanings.  It is also called bodhicitta, often translated as the heart/mind of awakening.

Bodhicitta is a central theme in Mahayana Buddhism and is perhaps something that should be discussed in secular schools.  As we saw earlier, bodhi means awakening or unfolding.  It is both the impersonal ‘totality of being’ unfolding as a delicate, unique, and transient individual, and, the individual, awakening to the totality.  Each movement utterly pervades the other and together they reveal a mysterious whole.  This twofold bodhi is playing out in citta, the heart/mind of one’s individual knowing and experience.  Heart is God appreciating each detail.  Mind is each detail appreciating God.  Both movements together reveal a complete mandala, a rich a vibrant human being.

For some people, this two-in-one truth is an inspiring and beautiful thought.  For a smaller number, it is a lived experience, a true life of blessing.  Most of us though, were brought up by adults who, in the course of their lives, lost touch with the great mystery of living that they are.  As if through osmosis, we absorbed and embodied our parents’ hopes, fears and prejudices until, gradually, like the moon eclipsing the sun, these narrowed attitudes and approaches to life restricted our potential for clear seeing and we too lost sight of the interconnected unfolding of life that we are.  Shaped by social, economic, political and philosophical views, we drifted into ever more partial ways of experiencing.  The universe became a collage of separated bits, sometimes co-operating, often competing and almost always in threat of isolation, guilt and fear of abandonment.  Bodhicitta became more and more hidden.  Ironically, it can even be hidden through becoming a Buddhist and then naming a concept called ‘bodhicitta’ while not simultaneously realising that bodhicitta is what is doing the naming!

Imagine being born to parents who lived and appreciated this ancient and ongoing dance of life unfolding, who then nourished it by affirming the unique and precious vastness of your being, who encouraged you in a wide ranging investigation of all the myriad details of life, who demonstrated to you, at that early impressionable age, a fundamental approach to living that is deeply imbued with love and wonderment and a sense of fresh, spontaneous curiosity.  This is the heart of buddhadharma in action.  It also begins to look like the foundations of very good education.

A big step towards meaningful education involves honouring and appreciating the dual mystery that we are; this mutual shaping of inner and outer, of self and other, of body and mind, of subject and object; this seamless dyad of individuality and wholeness.  This is the nature of each student.  It is the nature of each teacher.  Encouraging it to flower and function well is the heart and foundation of good education.

With the economic cutbacks of today we often see schooling and education reduced to a pouring in of facts and figures and experiences.  Eventually the student is stuffed.  Sometimes this supports a conceited belief that the world we have learned to know, is the way the world really is.  Sometimes the weight of the ‘stuff’, crushes everything about us that is truly alive and we survive as automatons, replaceable units in the mechanical workplace market of life.

Rather than force feeding students with facts and experiences that will help them to maintain the world that we, the older generation, have grown accustomed to, education should be primarily engaged in drawing out, or drawing attention to, the qualities of being that can help us creatively meet with each new situation that arises in the journey of our communal living.  This includes meeting with earthquakes, environmental degradation, economic collapses and political turmoil.

How can we do this?  We need to explore and investigate our bodies, how they work and how they intermesh with others at multiple levels, from micro to macro.  We need to understand our feelings and the way we colour experience with values of good and bad, liking and disliking.  We need to learn the skills of unravelling tangled emotions and the resultant physical sensations.  We need to grapple with how the world of our knowing arises ever-fresh, moment by moment – a weaving of body, speech and mind, self and others.  We need to refine and augment our powers of observation through each of our senses.  These are our gateways to the world, the potentially sensitive points of meeting with others.  We need to cultivate the art of resting at ease and awake, in states of not knowing everything, and not being able to know everything.  We need to let go of the fear driven compulsion to freeze reality with the hammers and nails of dogmatism and certainty.  We need to cultivate the whole mandala of aliveness, capacities for thinking, feeling, sensing and intuiting.  We need to value diversity and its vast, creative, ultimately unknowable dance, called living.  We need to cultivate the potential that is in each of us to be utterly present for each other.  We need to learn the arts of tolerance and forgiveness and occasional apology and restraint.

Buddhadharma and secular education have much to offer each other.  Education can offer microscopes, literature, art and cultural history and a tradition of scientific enquiry.  This would take Buddhadharma into the 21 century with a relevance that would be felt by all.  Buddhadharma can offer ways of cultivating attentiveness, appreciation, forgiveness, mindful presence and healing.  These skills would enhance and round out the school curriculums honouring and respecting the deep intelligence and potential that is in each of us.  Buddhadharma and education belong together.  They augment each other and skilfully joined would help us humans tackle the challenges that will increasingly face us in the times to come.

Over the years, I have had the privilege of working with teachers from many traditions and backgrounds.  Some of them teach in schools; primary, secondary or tertiary.  Some teach healing arts; psychotherapy, body work, counselling and various forms of medicine.  Some teach meditation and a range of spiritual approaches to living.   In these times of tightening budgets and increased anxiety about the state of world and where we are all going, it is more and more vital for our own well being and for the well being of those we teach and interact with, that we live day by day with our feet solid in the ground of here and now wonder and appreciation, in all its vastness.  My aspiration is that these thoughts on education and buddhadharma will in some small way serve to strengthen our willingness and ability to do this.

Postscript

I began this essay on education and buddhadharma a number of years ago.  It was originally intended to be part of a reflection on the aspiration and purpose of the Wangapeka Educational Trust, a study and retreat centre in the south island of New Zealand that I have associated with for many years.  Somehow in the flow of circumstances, that early draft fell by the wayside; lost in a pixel cul-de-sac on my hard drive.  Recently it popped into view and in the light of momentous geologic events this year in New Zealand, I was inspired to rewrite it, making it, I hope, more broadly relevant.  For months, the great  taniwha of plate tectonics has been flexing its muscle, hammering Christchurch and the surrounding area with three major earthquakes and thousands of aftershocks.  Many people were killed or injured.  Thousands of homes were damaged if not destroyed.  Hundreds of business have collapsed.  Adults and children of all ages have been traumatized.  Life as many knew it, and expected it to be, has been turned upside down as parts of the city sink back into a wetland swamp and other parts are entombed under fallen rock.  This happened in the same year as the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

One friend, living in Christchurch, who runs the administration side of a small school that was badly damaged in the first earthquake, has miraculously found time to write periodic uplifting e-mails to friends and extended family.  After the third quake, which really knocked the stuffing out of many people who were already barely coping with the first two, she shared some observations which, in spite of the trauma that is widespread, reveals a breadth of vision and aspiration that is wonderfully uplifting.  Describing how parents, teachers and children supported each other emotionally, and physically, adapting to broken plumbing, stuck doors, jammed windows, and cleaning up mud and liquefaction so that the school could continue, she wrote; “I hope I am around to see these children as they mature into the business, public and political leaders of the future.  I suspect that when that time comes, Christchurch will have been the home of a disproportionate percentage.”

Many schools have been disrupted by closures but deepening the skills of being truly human, the skills of being present and curious and capable of sharing in the very midst of an ever changing and unpredictable world, the gift of knowing what is important and being able to let go of what isn’t; these lessons have continued.  The school of life-experience hasn’t closed.  The personal maturing that comes with remembering and appreciating the value of friendship and the wisdom of community, for many in Christchurch, these learnings have actually accelerated.  Meanwhile, on television, in addition to reports of great courage and human kindness, we see, politicians, bureaucrats, and other officials, sometimes clearly out of their depths, waffling and justifying and red taping the process of recovery in a desperate attempt to fit in with and conform to, an already bankrupt and dysfunctional economic system.  These are telling demonstrations of the results of an education system that has done little to prepare them for the reality of being part of an evolving living world; a world with earthquakes, with climate change, a world that is an interweaving of biology, geology, meteorology, sociology and much more, a world that we share with all species, a world that we are awesomely and humbly privileged to be a part of.   The coming together of all these occurrences has nudged me towards finishing this essay and for all of that and all of you, I am thankful.

© Tarchin Hearn 08/11

Praise for, ‘A Human Being Died That Night’ by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

by Tarchin Hearn on July 6, 2011

Praise for ‘A Human Being Died That Night’
by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
Mariner Books, 2004, ISBN 0-618-44659-1
Some books are much more than pages and print.  Engulfing and disturbingly engaging, they slip into hidden crannies of one’s being, places forgotten, or ignored or more often simply overlooked in the ongoing business of living.  We find ourselves reviewing and revising our own lives in the light of what is presented and in that sense, even though the book may rest on a table for parts of the day, it could be described as un-put-down-able.  A Human Being Died That Night, written by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela was such a journey for me.  Though the author is writing of her experiences, her insights and her struggles as a clinical psychologist working for South Africa’s  ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’, her penetrating and compassionate observations reverberate with relevance for many other countries and situations.

How can we heal communities that have been wounded by gross violence, prejudice and pathological ignorance?  Recognising that we share the same space of being, that we walk on the same earth and breathe the same air; that when we harm another, we harm and diminish ourselves, how can we learn to live well with each other when we share a history of mistrust and violence?  How do we find the courage to meaningfully forgive when we have been harmed, to nourish the core humanity of those who have hurt us, and to do this without condoning the harming?  When will we realise that healing society requires that we rely on our being able to see and appreciate the fragility and frailty and the need to love and be loved that is moving in each and every person.  How do we learn, as Czech writer and humanist, Vaclav Havel once wrote, to ‘live within the truth’?

Gobodo-Madikizela relates some of her personal experiences with preparing, and then bringing together, victims and perpetrators of apartheid era violence.  Much of the book focuses on her long series of interviews with Eugene de Kock who was jailed for life for his part as commanding officer of state sanctioned death squads under apartheid.  In the course of more than 40 hours of  interviews, she found herself responding to de Kock’s confusion, and remorse and gradually awakening conscience, and then having to struggle with her own emotional responses to his responses.  Her story is the eloquent testimony of a person of inspiring integrity and humanity.  It is a story of the deep healing that can come, even under the most unimaginably horrific circumstances.

In the midst of reading this book, I found myself reflecting on the seemingly benign society of present day New Zealand; about the unofficial and largely unconscious apartheid that so structures our lives that most people accept it as a normal state of affairs.  Humans carrying on, largely oblivious to the rest of living nature.  Rich people separate from poor people.   City people separate from country people.  The list hints at something systemic: government apart from people, private sector apart from public sector, and all of these separations being borderlands of conflict and confrontation stomping grounds of mistrust, suspicion and fear.  I found myself thinking of the deceptions and self serving views that allow us to poison our land and water in the name of healing and supporting nature.  I found myself thinking of the divisive ways we live on the earth, our economics, land stewardship and approaches to education, agriculture, science and religion, and our vast investment in industries of war and politics of power.

We need truth and reconciliation commissions all over the world, beginning with our families, our local communities and sanghas.  We have fractured the wholeness of life.  We humans have grown used to a normality of contention and confrontation, a normality that is so separated from the truth of interbeing that this unconscious practice of apartheid has become an ideology that we have come to accept and expect and see as inevitable.  We are all committed to the ideology.  We idealize fighting for good, even when it creates what we euphemistically call collateral damage.  The jails are overflowing.  The rivers and lakes are dying.  Species are denied a place to live by humans who don’t even realize such creatures exist.  Our economy based on extraction and unlimited growth is an impossible fantasy.  The gap between the rich and the poor increases everyday.  Our pharmaceutical industries are helping to poison the world.  Everyone wishes to do the right thing.  One group’s freedom fighter is another group’s terrorist.

A Human Being Died That Night is a heartfelt appeal to our deep intuition of living truth.  Please read it and allow it to inspire or prod or jolt or encourage you into wholesome action.  The people of South Africa, along with many throughout the rest of the world, thought that South Africa was destined for a racial blood bath.  With courage and inspiration, they managed to move, in what at the time was almost an unimaginable direction.  Throughout the world today, the problems of population and ecology and how we humans are living is bringing the whole planet to a similarly volatile place.  In understanding the need for a Truth and Reconciliation process and then having the wisdom, the courage and the determination to carry it through all its ups and downs, a large number of very ordinary yet extraordinary people, graced with the inspiration and inspiring examples of a few like Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela have shown us what true human beings are capable of.  Their courage and vision is now rippling round the world.
© Tarchin Hearn, July 6, 2011
www.greendharmatreasury.org

 

 

How to Stitch a Robe – Reflections on Ordination and Divine Ordinariness

by Tarchin Hearn on June 20, 2011

Robes are like onion skins.
When you peel off one layer, another is revealed.
Even if you keep peeling off the layers,
you will never arrive at a central core or essence of onion-ness.
All you will have is a pile of old robes
. . . and a lot of space.

It’s not so rare for people, at some time or another in the course of their lives, to feel a stirring, a calling, a deep pull, to join a religious order – in Buddhist parlance, to take robes.  It seems that most manage to ignore this disturbing wobble in normality, or if unable to do so, they end up rationalizing it away: a medieval nostalgia, an adolescent fantasy, totally impractical, a meaningful thing to do but  . . .  maybe later  . . .  when I’ve finished my current projects and obligations!  Yet beyond desires to escape from rat races and lives of stressful trivia; or urges to be part of a respected community that is dedicated to study and contemplation; there flows a deeper yearning to free one’s self from society’s pervasive addiction to fragmentation and continual conflict and instead, to flower as an integral part of God’s garden, a community or sangha of life-unfolding wholeness.

In some traditions, a novice would sew their own robe.  In the Tibetan Vajrayana  tradition, robes or clothing represent thoughts or concepts or attitudes.  From this perspective, entering the religious life should probably involve taking off clothes rather than putting them on!  In spite of this, the setting aside of secular clothing and the wearing of robes or some kind or religious garb or insignia can be part of the process of transforming one’s life – an outer visible sign of an inner invisible process.  For young monastics, struggling with ego dreams, caught in the ancient and largely unconscious pattern of seeking approval and affirmation from parent or mentor or peers, the robe often becomes a focus of concern and it’s not uncommon for a considerable amount of thought and energy to coalesce around it.  Robes are a way of creating and maintaining a more solid identity.  This is far from maturing into a soft, easeful naturalness; a playful, no big deal, attitude to identity.

The true religious life is not possessed by any school or tradition.  It grows from reality itself.  It is older than time and wiser than any wisdom teaching.  Here is a meditation on how to stitch a robe.  I thank Linda R. who years ago asked for such a practice, thus sowing the seed for these words.

She was born into this extraordinary world;
a living planet,
a dancing of millions of interdependent species,
this mystery that grows us;
flowerings of wonderment, reverence and awe.

It’s what we are.
It’s what we’re in.

It’s who we’re with.
It’s where we are,
and . . .
why we are.

It’s what she was, is and will be,
–  in spite of exponential population growth, leading to masses of people living knee to elbow, cheek by jowl, mingled together in cities with oceans of anxiety, jungles of fantasy, storms of desire and frustration, and all the while shopping to survive, lost in a global culture of technology and mechanization, that, driven by market forces, requires ever increasing human intervention, micro-management, and control.

In a heartfelt moment of nostalgia and deep aspiration,
her parents named her Sophie to remind them (and their daughter) of a world of living wisdom, a world that was moment by moment, bit by bit, one creature after another, gradually slipping away.

She grew in body and spirit and interrelatedness.
She might have gone to a regular school.
She might have been ‘successful’.
She might have striven to get somewhere, to prove herself, to be someone
but instead
somehow . . .
She fell into a life of deepening and discovery,
cultivating the ancient arts of kindness and communal being-ness and clear-seeing presence and unrestricted reverential enquiry.

She explored how bodies and minds of myriad species are weaving together this mystery of nowful presence.  She cultivated awareness practices of buddhadharma and meshed them with science, personal healing and social responsibility to enter a way of living that, in an age of anxiety and uncertainty, was awesomely inclusive and joyously life affirming.

One day she decided to take robes; to commit herself to a life of health and naturalness and service.  This is her story and . . .
it could be your story.

As you sew your robe,
do a mantra of loving-kindness with each stitch.
Consider this robe that clothes you:
the robe of your body, the robe of emotions,
the robe of thoughts, and feelings and memories,
the robe of relationships,
of friendships, companionships, and casual meetings through life,
the robe of blessings and teachings and teachers,
the robe of all your ancestors, leading back to the beginnings of earth,
and the robe of your current life activities,
rippling out in myriad ways and directions,
reverberating into unknowable futures through the lives of all you touch.

Consider how you are clothed in stardust,
galaxies and the gravity of celestial bodies.
Consider all the lives that nourish you, support you,
and lend their beingness to your being.
Blue-jay, maple and may-fly,
Tui, flax and cricket.

And every once in a while, consider
what is there, when there’s no robe,
when there is total nakedness!

Who is it that is stitching?
Who is hosting these threads of your life
– this visible robe for the nourishing of everyone?

Life is not a journey,
we are eternally here.
Life is not a learning,
there is no knowledge to accumulate.
Life is not a testing,
there is no authority to judge.

Dwelling in a space of love,
tendrils of curiosity reaching forth in all directions,
we feel our way,
softening and sensitizing into the richness of community,
a living world within us, around us and through us.

Apprentices of wonderment and awe,
probing and questioning,
sampling and savouring
with calm abiding and vivid discernment exquisitely intermeshed,
we touch our home,
this world of you and me and all of us together,
precious
beyond words.

Endnote:
At the time of the Buddha, robes were simple clothes made from discarded fabric, sometimes bits of tattered cloth from funeral shrouds.  Sewing these many pieces together symbolized the reconnecting of the many different aspects of our life; aspects that are also parts of other being’s lives.  The making and on-going mending of a robe was an opportunity to contemplate wholeness and connectedness; this seamless garment, this cloak of many colours.  Wearing such a robe would remind us of the wholeness and inter-beingness of life and provide the opportunity for others to glimpse a possibility of wholeness.  To be clothed like this goes along with a willingness to be truly seen.

Originally the robes were utterly functional – just as wholeness is utterly functional! They were worn to keep warm or cool, to stave off biting insects, protect from the sun and to preserve a basic modesty.  Today, religious traditions have, by and large, lost touch with the simple, straightforward and practical.  They have replaced the grace of divine ordinariness with institutionalised ‘ordination’.  For many seekers, the robe is bought ready-made off the rack, and we are prided or shamed by the richness or poverty of the colour and weave.  We might ask what need have spiritual beings for needles and threads?  With our air-conditioned buildings and pesticide protected nature, robes have lost most of their original functions and now, more often, serve to identify the wearer as being a religious someone who belongs to a particular tradition or cult.  Robes have become uniforms, badges of office, tokens of authority and myriad other functions far from the original, simple, natural intent.

To glimpse the wholeness and unity of beingness,
To value the vast dance of diversity, the unique one-off-ness of each individual,
To marry these two – seamlessly – in the temple of our lives,
This is to enter the ancient and venerable order of divine ordinariness.

Each day brings opportunities for a fresh ordination.
Each moment of living we don our robes anew.
One morning, in such a moment, the following verse blossomed in my mind.
It felt like my voice whispering through the cells of my body,
Reminding me of how I might move through the day.
It could be your voice.
It could be our prayer.
May it touch us deeply.

Being the fullness of the human animal that I am,
Uniquely clothed in this continuously morphing collage of sentience,
Abiding in the monastery of a world that is utterly and profoundly alive,
I wander in unpretentious openness, wonderment and service.

sarva mangalam

© Tarchin Hearn, June, 2011

A Cubic Metre of Air –a few breaths in the life of a mystic scientist –

by Tarchin Hearn on June 16, 2011

This short piece was originally written in July 1999.  It may give you a fresh sense of possibility for breathing meditation.


I look into the air and see right through it.  I move my body and feel invisible pressures, waftings of liquid presence, pressing round with no gaps or spaces.  Looking opens to knowing this mystery; in the room, in the door locks, between the carpet tufts, around my tongue, wrapping each object so intimately that no violence of movement can cause a total vacuum.

Playfully I isolate a cubic metre of space and begin to sift the invisible contents with sieves of in-place knowing.  Dust, moulds, tiny seeds, spores, bits of hair and flakes of skin; pollen grains of many species, globs of soot, perfume, diesel fuel exhaust, invisible microorganisms grazing the three dimensional field, tiny insects – themselves great birds of prey in this micro vastness; and all of these beings, complex weavings in themselves, are leaking chemicals and absorbing others.

There is a cacophony of chemical conversations, a silent deafening clinking of countless bottles, all carrying messages to land eventually on new and unexpecting shores.  “Goods for sale.”  “Accommodation wanted.”  “Flatmate looking for companion.” “Employment offered” and “employment wanted”; a vast metropolis floating in the matrix, trusting in the universe to further all their stories.

Around these fluid becomings are molecules of gas, translucent to photons streaming from the solar being’s great unfathomable heart.  Nitrogen, carbon dioxide, oxygen, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, ammonia, methane and so forth.  They are jiggling and flowing, vibrating to the dance of changing temperature, always on the move from here to there.

Linking into forms and disappearing from space.
Entering space and bursting free from opaque forms.
This cubic metre is a bouillabaisse,
an either soup,
a ferment of beingness, rich and flavourful
to tongues designed to taste these worlds.

Breathing in a sucking swirling of beings, logs, flotsam and jettison – the whole avian universe rolling round the nostril hairs, heating, transforming, descending into a new time and place of constant changing activity.  Gaseous universe plunging into the ocean.  My blood is filled with beings.  Conversations everywhere, orgies of potlaching, gifts given and received, a never ending party with guests coming and going.

How rarely we imagine the richness of activity that is needed for anything to be, even if that anything is called ‘being bored’ or ‘doing nothing’ or simply waiting for something interesting to occur!  Dip into this moment of nowness.  The one that’s all around you and right in front of your nose.  Open your mind and breathe.  You’ll see what I mean.

 

Deep Roots and Fearless Compassion

by Tarchin Hearn on June 1, 2011

I read the following two paragraphs during a recent weekend retreat in Auckland and it seemed to touch people deeply.  One of the participants asked that it be put on Green Dharma Treasury, hence this posting.  The writing was originally part of an extensive e-mail reply to some questions about using anger in compassionate ways.  It’s not uncommon today for people to aspire to explore dharma and to live awarely and compassionately and yet to experience frustration when people they care for don’t seem to value and cultivate these same interests.  Our friends, or relatives, or co-workers, might appear to be asleep or hypnotised and we, the frustrated dharma practitioner, sometimes get irritated and (out of compassion!) want to break through the dullness in order to wake them up.  There is even a category within Buddhism to describe this and it’s called wrathful or fierce compassion.  I wanted to shine a different light on such situations and the following words arose.

Dear (you might like to fill in your own name here)
You are a tree.  If your experience of roots is shallow and the wind is strong, you need to be very flexible and accommodating in order not to be blown down.  You bend with every little puff, and that can be tiresome, and tiresomeness breeds irritability.  You restrict the growth of your leaves and branches so that your small public face can be secure with your small hidden roots.  If you feel your roots running vast and deep, even if the wind is threatening, you can be very strong and upright and you still will not be blown away.  The deeper your roots, the broader can be your branches (and the more numerous your leaves and the heavier and richer your fruit).  Trees with deep roots might not bend as much as trees with shallow roots but trees with deep roots provide support and stability for more shallow rooted plants that grow all around and hang epiphytically from bark and limbs.

Fierce compassion is not about using anger in compassionate ways.  Fierce compassion is actually fearless compassion. (The word padma, in the mantra of Guru Rinpoché, represents “fearless compassion”.) Fearless compassion arises from deep rootedness; an experiential knowing of oneness and embeddedness in life.  This is a richness of being and natural engagement that leaves nothing and no-one out – that is profoundly inclusive.  With fearless compassion there is less fussing and concern for ‘self’ and more a tendency to stabilize and provide supportive inspiration for others.  Using anger/ill-will or directing anger for compassionate reasons is the action of a shallow rooted tree.  The tree with deep roots may stand uncompromising, implacable, upright and strong, and that may be felt by more shallow rooted ones as threatening, but the steadfastness of the deep, broad rooted one, ultimately stabilizes the earth and air and water content for all around and so in the end, such a being will be appreciated for their integrity.

 

← Previous Entries