All the Light We Cannot See
Photo by Mathew Schwartz
The Three Treasures of Buddhism are the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. In this talk, Zuisei speaks on what it means to cultivate trust in these three fundamentals of the path. When we place our full trust in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, we surrender to life because we know that fundamentally, it is good—and so are we.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
All the Light We Cannot See
I have been reflecting about what it means to take refuge in the Three Treasures. What this means to me every day, day to day, not in the abstract, but actually to take refuge. Especially, what it means when practice is difficult. Because when it's easy, everything is easier in a way. But what does it mean to take refuge when it's not easy? Dugou Kiense Rinpoche said that the essence of taking refuge is to have complete confidence in the Three Treasures, regardless of life circumstances, good or bad. Taking refuge is not striking deals with the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha. It's not, I trust you as long as things go my way, and when they don't, well, bets are off. It is complete trust. Complete in the sense that it is all pervading. Probably, most of us have never experienced that degree of trust, that completeness. Dada Roshi described it in his book Heart of Being. He would often talk about it as a trust that is devoid of safety nets; there just isn't a safety net.
He would talk about that character for being one with, which is really that taking refuge to Kie. In Kie, the first part, Kie, is to unreservedly throw oneself into. The second part, E, is to rely upon. The image he would give was of his son, who would stand on top of the dresser as Dada Roshi took a few steps back, and would stand there with his arms outstretched, and his son would leap through the air into Dada Roshi's arms, completely trusting that he would be there, that he would be there to catch him. As I remember that image, I remember we had a dog like that, a little dachshund, who would climb up on my mother's bed, and he would go to the edge of the bed and leap into space, knowing that we would be there to catch him, and all four legs would be horizontal, and his ears would be horizontal. He would just jump, and he would do this over and over again. There was no ounce in his being of hesitancy. There was nothing, nothing held back. Maybe he just had a very small brain. But he was all in, all in.
I've been thinking a lot about this. There are no safety nets. Who's catching you? What's catching you? Yourself, of course. Trusting the Dharma, aligning with the Dharma, you catch yourself. There is nobody else. We know this, we hear this all the time, but do we really know it? The teacher doesn't catch you. God doesn't catch you. You catch yourself. Because on occasion we do miss, in the context of the Sangha, we catch each other. To me, it's interesting that the Japanese points to both completely relying upon the Three Treasures, but also on this complete openness, complete vulnerability, really complete nakedness. That throwing oneself into, and you don't even know what you're throwing yourself into. That's not usually how we think about refuge. We think of it as a shelter, as being protected from the elements, from each other, from whatever bad could happen to me. Refuge protects me from that. This seems almost the opposite. You put yourself out there completely, and that's the protection. Even what this vulnerability really is, it doesn't necessarily match our image of it. It's not just if I say what I'm thinking, if I say what I'm feeling, what I'm experiencing, if I share that with you without holding back, then I'm being vulnerable. True vulnerability is much more subtle than that. It's a quality we can feel, we can certainly sense in ourselves, we can sense in each other. It's very tender. That's the tenderness that to me is just the very tip of the iceberg of what you can communicate with words. We say so much, we tend to say so much, but what are we actually saying?
Holding the Light
The whole incident in Paris, the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, has really been working on me and it came up as I was writing this talk. I shared with a couple of you. I was really thinking, what does it mean, freedom of speech? It seems to me, at least maybe to some of us, the freedom to say whatever we want, to do what we want without consequence. That's impossible. We don't live as independent bubbles that have no effect on the other bubbles. It's one thing to laugh, to make fun, to poke fun at what's threatening. As Stephane Charbonnier, the editor, said, he would rather die standing than live on his knees. What he felt he needed to do. Certainly not for me to say or to question, but I question in the sense that he was not alone. He was not the only one affected, of course. What he said, what he did had an effect on the people around him. I read an article by a woman, Roxane Gay, in The Guardian, and she was saying exactly this: the freedom of speech is not freedom from consequence. She was pointing to the movement that arose right away. People were saying, I am Charlie. Just as people have said, I am Eric Garner. I am Michael Brown. She said, if I don't say that, I am not Charlie. If I say that, does that mean that I am for the terrorists? When our responses are limited to you are either with us or against us, those that need to mourn and be sympathetic to complexities are cast as villains. If you're either right or wrong, if I'm in this camp or that camp, I lose the complexity of what it actually means to be human, what it means to have competing desires, to change my mind, to be uncertain, to be confused. Do we have the ability to hold all of it? It's very difficult to hold all of it. But this is what it means to be human. We don't always walk a straight line. Most of the time, we don't walk a straight line. At its heart, this tenderness, recognition that the universe, and of course that includes us, is an infinitely fragile place. This is terrifying. Some of us respond with hubris, with bravado. Some of us retreat, we shut down. Some of us recognize that the only way to deal with this fragility is to face it, to turn toward it, to hold it with a great deal of respect, an enormous respect, and to wonder what is it really. Recognizing our fragility, we take refuge in that which is not fragile. We take refuge in that which is in fact unbreakable, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. They cannot be broken because they are whole. They are all pervading.
The Buddha treasure is the historical Buddha, Shakyamuni, but it's also Anutara Samyaksambhuri, perfect, complete enlightenment. It's our nature. This is our nature. We may not feel like it often, but this doesn't make it any less true. All things are illuminated right now. We may be squinting, we may be blurry-eyed, we may not see it. It is true. It is here, always. Buddha is also the realization of that nature. There is light, and then there is seeing that light, there is living that light, there is feeling its warmth. It is also the infinite manifestations of Buddhas throughout space and time. We chant that every day, several times a day, all Buddhas throughout space and time. We gather in that chant, we gather all the Buddhas that have ever lived, all the Buddhas that will ever live to this room. In one sense, it's a formality. They don't need an invitation. They've always been here. They're home, just as we're home. In inviting them and invoking them, we give, actually, they give us the opportunity to notice, to remember once again that yes, here they are. All the infinite Buddhas that make up the Buddha treasure.
The Dharma treasure is the Buddha's teachings, but it's also undefiled purity. The reason it's undefiled is because it reaches everywhere, so there's nothing outside that can stain it. You can't miss it. You can't offend the Dharma treasure. Let me repeat that: you can't offend the Dharma treasure. It reaches everywhere. It embraces everything. It accepts everything. No, not without consequence, but it accepts everything. The Dharma is also the teachings, very practically, the teachings that have been handed down generation after generation. All the sutras, all the commentaries, the oral teachings, all the words that give expression to the profound truth that the Buddha realized, and that we are fortunate enough to have access to. It's all the wisdom of all of those who have walked the path before us and who have said, this is what it's like to be human. This is what you can expect.
Don't let the world change you. Calm yourself, be still, and listen deeply.
The Sangha treasure is the community of practitioners, it's all of us, and everybody else who's practicing. It is also the virtue of harmony. It takes work, it takes work to maintain this harmony, but this is what Sangha does. We're not just a crowd, a random gathering of people, or even a deliberate gathering of people, an intentional gathering of people. That's not enough, that's not Sangha. Sangha is the virtue of harmony. Without harmony, there is no Sangha. It is a jewel, and it's rough at first. But as we hear so many times, we carefully polish it. We deliberately polish it until it shines, until it's brilliant. The Sangha is the abode of the Buddha and the Dharma. It is also the practice of the Buddha's Dharma. It is the doing of that Dharma, the embodiment of the Buddha's teachings in our own lives. I sometimes think about it as a kind of consistency, congruity. In his book No Man Is an Island, Thomas Merton says, the truth in things is a reality. In our minds, it is the conformity of our understanding with the things known. In our words, it is the conformity of our words to what we think. In our conduct, it is the conformity of our acts to what we are supposed to be. I humbly think I would change that last line to read, it's the conformity of our acts to what we truly are. It's no gap. Thought, speech, and action match. That's the virtue of harmony.
This aspect of practice, I think, requires infinite trust in yourself, relentless patience, and unwavering determination. So often inside and outside don't match. Sometimes we don't know what's inside. We don't understand outside. Sometimes there is a mismatch. So we practice. We practice. One of my favorite anecdotes, and I've quoted it a couple of times at least, but I love it, is of AJ Musty, who was a Dutch American minister and peace activist, and who during the Vietnam War would stand every night, every evening, outside the White House holding a candle, a lit candle, in protest of the war. One night a reporter went up to him and said, "Mr. Musty, do you really think that lighting a candle is going to change the policies of our country?" Musty said, "Oh no, sir, you have it all wrong. I am not doing this to change the country. I am doing this so the country won't change me. I do this so as not to be swept up. I am swept up by the world's confusion, by its greed, its anger, its ignorance, which is my own desire and anger and ignorance. I do this so that the world won't change me. I change, and the world changes. But I do this so that the world won't change me." Practice is lighting that candle every day, no matter the weather. You stand with your candle and you hold it high, and it's seventy degrees outside, so clear that you can see the stars as if in three dimensions. You could reach and touch the Big Dipper. You stand there when it's pouring, when it's hailing, when it's snowing. You stand there when you don't want to stand there, when you think, I can no longer stand here. And you stand there. You stand there in the middle of a hurricane if you have to. If you understand that candle, if you understand standing, then you know that all you need to do is light it and hold it up. It's very simple. You may not know whether you can feel the difference as of doing anything. You may not know if you have the right candle to begin with. You just stand and you hold it. Not even a typhoon can put it out.
Finding the Ground
Martin says, "It takes more courage than we imagine to be perfectly simple with others. Our frankness is often spoiled by our fear." He's talking about sincerity. We become afraid, we become confused. In our confusion, we so often try to get signals, what is right, what is happening. We forget. We're so caught up in the world, it seems so messed up that we forget, oh, I just have to look in. We forget, oh, I'm still holding the candle, and it's lit. He says, "Your idea of me is fabricated with materials you have borrowed from other people and from yourself. What you think of me depends on what you think of yourself. Perhaps you create your idea of me out of materials that you would like to eliminate from your idea of yourself. Perhaps your idea of me is a reflection of what other people think of you. Or perhaps you think of me as simple, or what you think of me is simply what you think I think of you." In any case, we can't see ourselves. We certainly can't see the other. In the middle of this muddle, we forget we're still holding that candle. We're always holding it. In fact, we don't even actually have to light it. It's always been burning, and it will not be put out. It's impossible to put it out. We try, we sure try, because we still think it's a candle. We still think, I picked it up, I have to light it, and I have to make sure you don't take it from me. But actually, it can be taken. No one can take from you what you have always had. You cannot lose what you never were missing. Sometimes we just can't see that. We don't feel it. The candle seems definitely to be out or it's whistling. That's the time to turn to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. It's always time, but especially when we think we're lost, when we think we can't find the ground under our feet.
In his book All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr very beautifully speaks of the protagonist. It's a girl, Marie Lohr, who's five, a little younger than six years old, and she's going blind. Her father is a master locksmith, very good with his hands. Every time her birthday comes around, he designs a puzzle, some kind of box, a miniature box that has a puzzle she has to solve in order to open and see what's inside, the jewel that's inside. As she starts to lose her sight, he builds a miniature city for her. He builds Paris with every single building, every roof, every cornice, every tree, every grate, every piece of sidewalk. He asks her to start seeing it through her hands. In the beginning, she does this and thinks there's no relationship from the model to life. The real street, she can smell the fishmonger when passing by, smell the bakers a block away. She can feel whenever the sidewalk changes or dips. The model seems inert. It seems devoid of life. He insists she study it, and she does. By the time she's six years old, she's completely blind. She keeps studying the model, being with it, becoming familiar with this city that now has to be inside her.
When she turns seven, they go out for a walk. He takes her a few blocks away from their home, puts her in the middle of the sidewalk, spins her three times, and says, "Now, take us home." Her heart sinks. The first thing she thinks is, I can't do that. I can't do this. It's too big. All the smells are blending with each other, all the sounds. She can sort of hear crows and the children from the playground a few blocks away. He sees her face and says, "Marie, calm yourself. You can do this. You have your cane. Take us home." She can't. She can't even know which way to turn. She takes them on a detour six blocks away. That day, she can't do it.
The next week, on a Tuesday, they go out again. She still can't do it. She goes a little bit farther, but it's too big. There's too much noise. Too much chaos. Too many things coming at her. She can't distinguish them one from the other. They keep doing this Tuesday after Tuesday. A few days after she turns eight, it's a winter morning. They go out. Her father takes her to yet another street, six blocks away from their home. He spins her around three times and says, "Take us home." She realizes for the first time she's not afraid. Her heart did not sink into her stomach. She thinks, maybe I can do this. She thinks to herself, "Marie, calm yourself. Be still." She begins to listen. She realizes she can hear the fountain from the part they always pass on the way to the museum where her father works. She realizes that if she really concentrates, she can smell the eucalyptus and the alcohol from the apothecary. With complete confidence, she says, "We turn left." They turn, and her father stands behind her just a few steps behind, jingling his keys in his pocket, waiting for her to start. She starts walking. She touches the sidewalk with her cane. She feels the grate that should be right in front of the bakers. She starts counting her steps: one grate, two grates, three grates. She knows, "Oh, here we turn right." They turn right. She smells the butcher a couple of houses down. She realizes, "I'm going the right way." She keeps walking. Twenty minutes later, they are at the corner of her block. She turns. She feels her father look up at the sky with a huge smile. Even though she can't see, she knows he is looking up and smiling. His hair is standing on end in all directions, wet with snow. His scarf is askew on his shoulders. She knows that. She takes a few more steps. He sweeps her up from under her arms and twirls her around. He’s laughing, she’s laughing. She realizes, I did it. I did it. Not only that, she realizes she will never get lost again because it's inside her. She doesn't need anything else. Now she knows. They always was. But now she knows, she has it.
We have been practicing all this time. Some of you, since two hours ago. Some of you, ten years, twenty years. Each of us to the extent of our ability. We shouldn't forget that. We shouldn't forget what brought us here and what keeps us here, day after day, week after week. Let us not forget everything. Everything we do have. Whatever we think we've lost doesn't come close to what we have. What we still have, what we always have. Thank you. This body, this breath, this seat, these buildings, these teachings, the fact that I want to practice, the fact that I have the ability to practice, the time to practice, all of these are still here. So is the inextinguishable dharma, that candle that will not be put out. All the light we cannot see, but which is right there, without a doubt. When we seem to have lost that ground under our feet, let us turn towards each other and be that ground. That is what Sangha does. That is what Shantideva says: the vow to be the ground, to be the sustenance, to be the bridge, to be the raft, whatever people need, to be the guard, the protector, the guide, food, medicine, whatever is needed, that's what we can be for each other.
We are the Sangha treasure, so that is within our ability. We could each practice on our own, and that would be good, and it would be powerful. Instead, we do it like this, because it is good, and it's powerful. This is why we're here, and for each other, to remind ourselves, to remind each other, as many times as we need to. Don't let the world change you. Calm yourself, be still, and listen deeply. Feel deeply. Look around you. We are not alone. We are not bereft. We still have everything that we will ever need.
All the Light We Cannot See, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.
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