[Admin’s note: This is part 2 of 2 from Lauren’s reflections on the 7-day Guan Yin retreat. During the Guan Yin session, participants recite the name of Guan Yin Bodhisattva. In our Chan tradition, meditation brings the mind back to whatever method of practice we are doing, whether it’s mental awareness, reciting, bowing, etc… Inevitably, the mind wanders off, and we gently bring it back. Once familiar with the motion of wandering off, we see what compels the mind to stray and develop a resistance against the habituation of that emotion.]
But I wonder if the foreignness of Buddhism in a Chinese cultural context will inhibit the average American from studying the Dharma and cultivating.
This past year I have participated in and have benefitted from a number of DRBA/DRBU sessions. Learning to develop mindfulness has had a profound effect on transforming my life. The practices set up by Master Hua, based on thousands of years of Eastern tradition, are very precious and carry the extraordinary potential of helping living beings learn how to end their suffering. But I wonder if the foreignness of Buddhism in a Chinese cultural context will inhibit the average American from studying the Dharma and cultivating. When Buddhism was first introduced to China, the Indian monks and early Chinese converts worked tirelessly to translate the Dharma into Chinese so that ordinary people could contemplate the Way. As a Sanskritist, I am curious—what did the ceremonies sound like in Indian languages? Were the ceremonies translated from Indian languages into Chinese, or were they made up by Chinese practitioners? Thinking about this question helps me to envision what an American ceremony might sound like. Having ceremonies in the local spoken language will enable suffering beings in that culture to connect with the Dharma.
When the Buddha taught Dharma, he always spoke to a particular individual or group, using concepts that were most familiar to that individual or group’s experience. For example, brāhmans in India served as priests in charge of keeping three ritual fires for Vedic sacrifice blazing at all times. Addressing a large assembly of brāhmans, the Buddha taught them not to keep the fires going, but to put them out. Why? The Buddha explained that their experience was on fire with the fires of greed, anger, and confusion. The three fires were fueled by five huge heaps, called the five aggregates, which cultivators should extinguish asap. The Awakened One taught the word nirvāṇa, which means put out or extinguished, in the context of teaching brāhmans who were caught up in maintaining external ritual fires. This method of addressing living beings from the context of their own conditions is known as skillful means (upāya).
However, the material objects never satisfy the lack… such that when that particular affliction arises under future conditions, the individual has to purchase more in an attempt to satisfy what is really an insatiable lack.
Today, I do not know any Americans who keep ritual fires burning in their homes. In this consumerist culture, many people have run up their credit cards and foreclosed homes, so we can apply the Buddha’s metaphor in a different way. Would it not be fair to say that people are “maxed out?”
Individual Americans, and increasingly more people of the world are following suit, have maxed out their credit cards, thinking that purchasing the material things that they desire will bring them happiness. Basing their identity on the material objects that they purchase, people become dependent on other people recognizing their social value, even their perceived existence, on the basis of those material things. However, the material objects never satisfy the lack that motivated the purchase, but actually increase that lack more, such that when that particular affliction arises under future conditions, the individual has to purchase more in an attempt to satisfy what is really an insatiable lack. Too many people have become desiring machines and gone into credit card debt; and yet, they feel empty.
Prompted by anger caused by perceived differences, frustration from not getting things “our” way, and the discomfort that arises when an “other” is perceived as having a divergent ideology or tradition….
In addition, the global economy based on self-interest and national advantage is also maxed out. Prompted by anger caused by perceived differences, frustration from not getting things “our” way, and the discomfort that arises when an “other” is perceived as having a divergent ideology or tradition, America has been involved in war after war since people learned that war was profitable. When will the anger that leads to violence stop? War does not encourage peace, but leads to more anger and frustration when people hold onto their narrow-minded differences, which in a sense are illusory anyway.
Finally, the confusion over who people want to be, fueled by greed and anger, has maxed out the environment. Environmental experts warn about the consequences of the rampant abuse of nature: if we continue to consume at the rate that we do, both in terms of individual commodity fetish and the sustainability cost of war, we will soon destroy the planet. So, we have maxed out as desiring machines, angry warring factions, and confused people who exhaust natural resources.
We need to stop spending. No more looking for satisfaction in material things, no more trying to dominate others to cover our frustration over perceived differences, and no more abusing the environment. The debt is not just material, but karmic too. The sooner we stop spending and adding to our karmic habituations, the better. The next step is to pay off the balance due asap so as to not accrue more interest on the debt in the form of continuing to react habitually to afflictions that arise.
During the past week of the Guan Yin session, I have tried to get a feeling for what the bodhisattva’s compassion that knows no limits might feel like.
During the past week of the Guan Yin session, I have tried to get a feeling for what the bodhisattva’s compassion that knows no limits might feel like. Guan Yin contemplates the sounds of the world and responds to the suffering of living beings. This week, I responded to the cry of the big bird in the classroom, but I can hear the urgent cries of many other living beings in the modern world who are suffering from being maxed out. Many Americans, 90% of whom identify as Christians, are not familiar with Eastern traditions, but like me, could benefit from the practices of investigating the mind that Master Hua introduced to this country. When the bird was crying, I opened a door for him, and he found his own way out. Suffering beings need a way out, which is what the sessions at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas offer to those who come to cultivate. In the spirit of Guan Yin’s great compassion, how many dharma doors can be opened to respond to the cries of the modern world? If a door is opened, more living beings can find their way out of the sea of suffering, out of the repetitive behavioral patterns (saṃsāra) that trap us inside the limitations that we each create in the mind.