Coming Home
Photo by Tim Wilson
In our practice home is limitless and all encompassing. It is a place of rest and refuge, and it is a place where we can hunker down and do the work of coming back to ourselves. We are never shut out of this home, but why can it feel as if we are? What can we do differently to remember that we are home?
This talk draws on the Maha-sihanada Sutta, Caste by Isabel Wilkerson, the poetry of Marie Howe and Davd Whyte, and more.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
This is called “Singularity” by Marie Howe:
(after Stephen Hawking)
Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity
we once were?
so compact nobody
needed a bed, or food or money—
nobody hiding in the school bathroom
or home alone
pulling open the drawer
where the pills are kept.
For every atom belonging to me as good
Belongs to you. Remember?
There was no Nature. No
them. No tests
to determine if the elephant
grieves her calf or if
the coral reef feels pain. Trashed
oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French;
would that we could wake up to what we were
—when we were ocean and before that
to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was
liquid and stars were space and space was not
at all—nothing
before we came to believe humans were so important before this awful loneliness.
Can molecules recall it?
what once was? before anything happened?
No I, no We, no one. No was
No verb no noun
only a tiny tiny dot brimming with
is is is is is
All everything home
Marie Howe was the state poet for New York in 2012. She wrote this poem a few weeks after Stephen Hawking’s death in 2018. He who proposed the concept of singularity, the moment in which the universe began—at least, as we know it now. The poem is speaking about that time before anything was, but it speaks of this moment as well … and this one … this is is is is is … This moment in which all, everything, is home.
That’s what I’d like to speak about: finding home or coming home in this now, this now-here. As a fellow teacher and writer described “nowhere” in the Book of 24 Philosophers: “God is described as a circle whose center is everywhere and its circumference is nowhere.” That’s exactly what the moment is like—a limitless, all encompassing now. A tiny, tiny dot brimming with is is is…
Another poet, Margaret Gibson, once gave an interview in which she described standing on her porch at night, looking up at the stars, and all of a sudden wondering, “What if there’s nothing?” She says her mind stopped. Everything was suddenly still and empty. Then she got scared because if there’s nothing, "What does that mean about me, about the world?" She was about six when that question popped into her mind. To reassure herself, she thought, “Well, that’s ridiculous, that there’s nothing, because who’s the one asking? Who’s the one wondering? That proves there has to be something.” And just like that, all life came rushing back. With words, with thought, she brought everything into being. Let me repeat that: With thought, with words, she brought everything into being. Do you understand?
But in the moment before, when there was nothing, in that moment, which is this moment, this place, there is no I, no them, no beginning, and no end. There is no suffering, and no end to suffering, or as the Heart Sutra says:
No suffering, no cause of suffering,
no extinguishing, no path, no wisdom and no gain.
No gain and thus the bodhisattva lives Prajna Paramita,
with no hindrance in the mind; no hindrance therefore no fear.
It’s because a bodhisattva recognizes this centerless, borderless circle, that they have no hindrance and therefore no fear. Because this is, that is …thus! That is Home, our home, the place from which everything is born, Prajna Paramita, which is also called the Mother of All Buddhas or the Womb of All Buddhas. Where do you think that is? Who do you think that is?
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live without fear? Fear of death or of dying? Fear of loss, fear of pain, fear of the other, fear of the unknown? Having no fear of being judged, of falling short, of not being loved? What would it be like to have no hindrance in the mind? To be able to rest, completely, in who we are, where we are, as we are? To rest, “into our aloneness, inhabiting our bodies as a beautiful unspoken question, rather than a fraught and never ending explanation,” as the poet David Whyte said. To inhabit our bodies, not as an explanation, it’s this and this and this and therefore not that and that and that. Our being, not as an explanation, as enumeration, as categorization and all the trouble that comes from these, but as an unspoken, open-ended question: What is this? How is this? And what is the best relationship between this and that?
I just finished reading Caste by Isabel Wilkerson. A few years back she won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting and became widely known for her book The Warmth of Other Suns, which describes the great migration of Black Americans who moved out of the southern states and into the North and Midwest. I’d been working with someone who’s writing a book and she mentioned Caste, and curious, I bought it recently. The premise, simply stated, is that the current racial and social hierarchy in the United States is really a caste system, not unlike that of India and Nazi Germany. Although there are a number of pillars, as Wilkerson calls them, that support a framework based on caste, I think it’s fair to say that what most drives that engine, what keeps it running, is fear. Primarily white folks’ fear of losing our place, our power, our comfort. Fear of losing our supremacy.
Her argument, lightly stated at the end of the book, is that the previous presidency and all the recent Supreme Court rulings, the mounting restrictions to women’s bodily autonomy, have had one purpose: to defend whiteness; to increase the birth rate of white people who are terrified of becoming a minority; to assuage the fear of those who think they’ll lose what they have, who believe that what we hold we can possess and control and keep for as long as we need; and that that is a good way to live. I think of this, before and after reading the book. I think of this teaching that says that Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, was doing deep Prajna Paramita, doing the Perfection of Wisdom. Notice the sutra doesn’t say, having wisdom, attaining wisdom, cultivating wisdom, it says doing this excellent, transcendent quality. Avalokiteshvara, living wisdom, embodying wisdom, liberates his mind and is free of fear, and doing so, he’s at home in his body, in his mind, in the world. He’s not afraid of losing ground, losing face, for Avalokiteshvara knows every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. Remember?
This was true before the singularity, and it is true now. One person’s gain is not another person’s lack, and never was. That’s a big part of being home, being at home—knowing that you’re safe, that you have enough and are enough, that there’s nothing you lack. Home is a place of rest, a place of refuge, a place where we can hunker down and do the work of coming back to ourselves, even though we never really left. Home is where we go when we sit down, cross our legs—or not—lower our eyes, quiet our minds. Home is what we find when we get a little quiet, a little still. Home is where we don’t have to hide, or test, or divide. We don’t have to win, therefore we don’t have to fear losing. We can put all our energy, all our enthusiasm, all our effort, into being, which is hard enough, given all the obstacles we set for ourselves.
You know that race, The Tough Mudder? It’s a mud and obstacle race. You have to jump into a dumpster filled with ice water, cross a mud field with live wires hanging over it, which shock you as you crawl through, run through fire, etc. I’m going to create a Bodhisattva Tough Mudder. You have to go stay with your parents for two weeks and practice not raising your voice even once. You have to sit in a traffic jam for two hours with no AC in the car and practice patience. You have to watch Fox News and practice not getting angry. These are just the low-level obstacles. You can practice for your own death. You can practice being with pain. You can practice moving through a break-up. Speaking to someone new to Buddhism who was having a difficult interaction with a relative I said, “See this as a field of practice, a field in which you are training your mind.” Something clicked. Instead of looking at it as an obstacle, suddenly they saw possibility, a challenge. Something they could rise up to meet. Something they could even be excited about.
It’s the logic of appropriateness, as opposed to the logic of consequence. When we act, many of us follow what is called the logic of consequence: We decide what to do based on what we think will produce the best results. For example, someone deciding whether to switch careers will look at what staying or going will give them—money, security, prestige, etc.—and will try to maximize the good. It’s pretty straightforward. What will give me the most of what I want? And do that. By contrast, the law of appropriateness helps us to act based on our own sense of ourselves. It’s like asking, “What would a person like me do?” If I’m a person who doesn’t want to or is not willing to live in fear, then I’ll choose those actions that will be in line with my fearlessness. If I don’t want to live impatient, judgmental, anxious, etc., I will choose those actions that will help me to be that person.
There is a sutra called The Great Discourse on the Lion’s Roar. It lists the ten powers of the Tathagata, the awakened one, among which are understanding what is possible and impossible, understanding the world and all its elements, as well as beings and their inclinations, and a few others. Once we start practicing, we understand, this is pain, this is pleasure. This is how I avoid, this is how I hold on. This is my idea about the world, not the world itself. This is my projection of you, this is who you really are. We just see more clearly.
Oh, I’m getting caught up in a fantasy or in an idea, but is it so?
Oh, I’m projecting into the future, but what is happening right now?
Oh, I believe there’s something wrong with me but I hear that I’m already whole—how is that?
The more we practice, the more we inhabit ourselves as a beautiful question. We’re not so quick to know what we think we know. We’re willing to consider the possibility that maybe, maybe we can be free. And so, from these powers of the Tathagata, the one who’s awake, has four kinds of intrepidity, which are essentially
that they’re awake
they’re free of obstacles or taints
recognize what those obstacles are, and
they’ve put an end to suffering.
Essentially, they know who they are and how to live their life without hindrance in the mind. Thus, they have no fear and they can roar the lion’s roar.
I will choose to stay in my career or to switch, not based on what I will get, but based on who I am or who I want to be and what is more in line with me. One is external motivation, the other is internal. One gives others or circumstances power. The other puts power where it belongs. This is just like the process of becoming free, of becoming more ourselves, more at home with who we are. We think not, what’s expected of me, what is everyone else doing, or even, what’s the right thing to do, but, What does a person like me do? I’ve spoken of this as, How do I want to live my life?
To end, "At Home" by David Whyte, whom I’ve mentioned in the past, is a Zen practitioner, one who understands the power, the love, the possibility inherent in stillness and silence, one who understand the power, and the importance, of coming home:
And [one]
with no company
but a house,
a garden,
and our own
well peopled solitude,
entering
the silences
and chambers
of the heart…
to start again.
Explore further
01 : Singularity by Marie Howe
02 : Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
03 : Maha-sihanada Sutta: The Great Discourse on the Lion's Roar translated by Ñanamoli Thera & Bhikkhu Bodhi