Death by Distraction; Life by Attention
Photo by Rodion Kutsaiev
The opposite of distraction is a present, mindful and clear awareness, a mind enlivened.
This talk offers a powerful antidote for distraction, in one word—prayer. Zuisei illustrates how as Buddhists we can engage this instinctive act, with its qualities of stillness, attention, aspiration, and intimate connection in the service of ending distraction. Prayer can guide us back to the heart of our practice, allowing us to continue to be present to our lives and all sentient beings.
This talk draws on the King of Prayer (part of a practice dedicated to Samantabhadra, the bodhisattva of practice and meditation), the Sedaka Suttas, the poetry of Lucille Clifton, 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.
May we purify an ocean of worlds,
May we free an ocean of beings,
May we see an ocean of dharma,
May we realize an ocean of wisdom.
May we purify an ocean of activities,
May we fulfill an ocean of aspirations,
May we make offerings to an ocean of buddhas,
May we practice without discouragement for an ocean of eons.
This dedication is from The King of Prayers, part of a practice dedicated to Samantabhadra, the Primordial Buddha, who’s also considered to be the Bodhisattva of Practice and Meditation. I thought it was a particularly appropriate dedication for us, the Ocean Mind Sangha.
I want to begin by saying a word about prayer, particularly because it’s a term that’s not often used in Zen, but it does appear in the greater scheme of Mahayana Buddhism, and also Vajrayana. There are different ways to think about prayer, or we could say that it has different aspects: introspection, reflection, petition, attention (listening). There is that common saying that prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening to God. Often, prayer is associated with a god or gods, as an act of worship, reverence, supplication. I think of it more broadly and more simply as being in relationship with ourselves, first and foremost, but also with the sacred, with reality, with awakening, with the divine within. That sounds a little New Agey, doesn’t it? Yet prayer is quintessentially Old Age. We’ve probably been doing it since before we could speak with words, with language.
So, praying, to me, is to be in relationship with a deeper, larger, more connected, more integral part of our being. Prayer is also aspirational. I don’t pray so that I may find my cookies at the supermarket, I pray that I may realize an ocean of wisdom, free an ocean of beings. I aspire to be the person I want to become, and I reach for that aspiration, that knowledge, that wisdom, even though, as we well know, I can’t become what I already am. But in prayer I’m asking that I, and you and all of us, be able to realize it. That we may recognize who we really are. Even that sounds a little strange.
It’s not that I’m faking it, pretending to be someone I’m not. It’s more that I can’t quite get to all of me. I don’t quite know all of me, that’s why I practice: to see, to live, all of me, and to see and live with all of you. Prayer is being in relationship with that part of yourself that is already wise, and kind, and awake. Reaching toward the wise in me, I call forth my own good qualities, my own wish for awakening (bodhicitta), my own enthusiasm, as we spoke about last time, my determination (adhiṣṭhāna). I ask that these qualities may be alive and working in me. I ask for the support of the buddhas and bodhisattvas, their guidance, their example.
May I purify an ocean of worlds,
May I free an ocean of beings,
May I see an ocean of dharma,
May I realize an ocean of wisdom.
May I be that ocean. May I be that vast and that … enduring. In the dedication for a memorial service, the liturgist chants:
Vast Ocean of dazzling light,
marked by the waves of life and death.
The tranquil passage of great calm;
embodies the form of new and old, coming and going.
Take note of what the dedication is saying. Someone, swimming in a vast ocean of dazzling light, dies, passing from life to death and back to life again. And this passage is tranquil. It’s filled with great calm (may it be so, in each of our deaths). We go from new to old, we come and we go, and the question is, from where to where? And who’s the one who’s passing?
Now in order to pray, in order to be in relationship with, we need to be present, we need to be focused, we need to be quiet. The nice thing is that prayer itself can help you be focused and quiet. In my book, I wrote about hesychasm—a monastic tradition in the Eastern Orthodox Church in which the practice is to cultivate stillness through prayer. Hesychia means stillness or silence. The monks repeat the Jesus Prayer like a mantra. They gather all their attention, they tune in their senses, and they move into stillness and silence, through prayer.
In Buddhism, the practice of reciting mantras protects the mind. Mantra means “mind protection.” Again, we gather our attention and let it rest on one word, one phrase—Three Refuges. For example: I take refuge in the Buddha, I take refuge in the Dharma, I take refuge in the Sangha (i.e., jukai: sewing). Vajrayana practitioners chant Om Mani Padme Hum (a chant to Chenrezig or Avalokiteshvara that means, roughly, “praise to the jewel in the lotus”) or Om Tare Tuttare Ture Soha (the Green Tara Mantra—“I prostrate to the Liberator, Mother of all the Victorious Ones”). But it can be very simple: “May I be safe, may I be kind, may I be joyful, may I be awake.” The purpose is to rest in silence, and not just gather the mind, but also enliven it because the opposite is death by distraction.
There are two sutras which take place in Sedaka, a town where the Buddha lived among the Sumbhans. In one sutra, there’s a concert, essentially, and a performer is singing and dancing before a thronging crowd. (You can picture the scene, think of your common music festival, or a rave, if that’s your inclination.) Among the crowd is a man who likes life and doesn’t like death, he likes pleasure and doesn’t like pain, in other words, an ordinary guy, a run-of-the-mill guy. He just wants to have a good time. But, to wake him up, the crowd puts a bowl filled to the rim with oil on his head, and they say to him:
“Take this to the dancing queen, but if you spill even a drop… Watch behind you—see the man with the sword? He’ll chop off your head!” And off the man goes to deliver his bowl of oil.
“Now what do you think, friends?” says the Buddha. “Will that man, not paying attention to the bowl of oil, let himself get distracted?”
“No, my Lord,” they answer. “He certainly won’t let himself get distracted.”
“Well,” the Buddha says, “I offered you this parable to make a point. The bowl of oil is mindfulness of the body. This is how you should train yourselves: ‘We will develop mindfulness. We will pursue it, hand it the reins and take it as our base. We will give it grounding, steady it, consolidate it, and undertake it well.’ That is how you should train yourselves, friends.”
Give mindfulness the reins, because a moment we miss is a moment we lose. But how do we hold this knowledge and not freak out? How do we be present but not uptight? Hold that thought.
In the other sutra, two acrobats are practicing their act. The master stands holding a bamboo pole and his assistant, Frying Pan, climbs on top of the pole, balancing herself. Once she’s on top, the master says to her, “Now, you watch after me, Frying Pan, and I’ll watch over you. This is how we’ll show off our skill, get our reward, and take care of each other.” And Frying Pan says, “Oh no! That won’t do at all, Master. I’ll take care of myself, you take care of yourself. That's how we’ll show off our skill, get our reward, and take care of each other.” And the Buddha says, “Just so. Taking care of ourselves, we take care of each other.” Possibly the best relationship advice ever given.
The Buddha isn’t saying, “Be selfish.” He’s not saying just think of yourself. He’s saying, take care of the thing you can take care of, protect the mind and the body that you can protect—yours. And in doing so, you’ll also be protecting the other. How? By not killing them through distraction—your distraction, your lack of awareness or understanding. He says, “How do you watch after others when watching after yourself? Through cultivating [the practice of mindfulness], through developing it, through pursuing it. This is how you watch after others when watching after yourself.” He’s saying focus on yourself, what’s going on in you. Get clear about what’s going on with you. That’s how you take care of another. But just in case, he covers all the bases: “And how do you watch after yourself when watching after others? [How does this work the other way around?] Through endurance, through harmlessness, through a mind of goodwill, and through sympathy. This is how you watch after yourself when watching after others.” When watching others, you are patient and steady, you don’t harm them, you wish them well, you understand them, this is how you take care of you while taking care of them. Benefiting others benefits us. Being present to others is being present to ourselves. This is something to keep uppermost in our minds.
So, death by distraction, life by attention. It’s such a basic teaching, yet everything depends on it: the four noble truths, the eightfold path, the four immeasurables, the five remembrances, the six paramitas, the seven factors of enlightenment, the eight awarenesses of an enlightened being, the nine dwellings, the ten stages of a bodhisattva, to name just a few.
If we don’t remember to practice or if we can’t focus on practice when we’re doing it, everything else becomes more difficult. That’s why the Buddha says our lives depend on mindfulness, on attention. And if you think about it, everything we know, we know at some level of quiet. When things are chaotic—whether inside or outside—it’s much more difficult to take in the world (which includes everything that’s happening here). Everything we know, we’ve learned … somehow.
In one of Plato’s dialogues called “The Meno,” a young Thessalian general, who’s called Meno, asks Socrates, “And how will you inquire, Socrates, into that which you do not know?... And if you find what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing that you didn’t know?” He’s asking, if we know something, then we don’t need to learn it, but if we don’t know it, how can we even know that we don’t know it? One and two, how can we learn it at all? How do we know what we don’t know?
Socrates essentially answers that there’s no learning—only recollection—which is perfect, my dear friends, given that sati, the Pali word for mindfulness (the Sanskrit is smrti), means to recall or to bring to mind. How do we know what we don’t know? We do know it; we just have to remember it. It’s all stored in the oceanic storehouse consciousness, all those seeds, remember (from our study of the Yogachara and Thich Nhat Hanh’s commentary on its teaching in Understanding Our Mind)? All we have to do is bring those seeds to consciousness. But let me say this again, so it’s clear. The reason we can gain insight and wisdom into what we don’t know is because deep down, we do already know it. We’re simply pulling it up to the surface of the ocean so we can see it, and so we can use it. The reason we can become buddhas is because we’re already buddhas. We’re not becoming someone else, something else.
Please remember this when you get discouraged. When you don’t feel like practicing, or when it doesn’t seem to be working, when nothing’s happening, say to yourself, “I’m a buddha.” Don’t just nod internally when I say it—or roll your eyes internally when I say it, try it. Try, when you’re feeling really down and discouraged, saying to yourself, “I’m a buddha, I’m a buddha, dammit! And no one can take that away from me!” Because it’s true, it’s true. Don’t let yourself die a slow, painful death by distraction. Don’t let yourself be content with not knowing what you don’t know. Ask, investigate, inspire yourself to get larger, to go deeper, to see farther. I do quite a bit of cheerleading, it’s my job and I love it. But ultimately, the best cheerleading for you is you.
You know that, right? I’m just standing in, filling the part until you’re ready to do it yourself. Because that’s the most important encouragement you’ll get, the one that comes from you to you. Call it prayer, call it positive thinking (we’d call it Right Thought or Right Aspiration, the second factor in the Noble Eightfold Path). Call it whatever you want, but do it. Gather the troops and sound the bugle and line up all the warriors in your mind and heart and let them know you’re ready, not for battle, but for living. You’re ready and you’re not going to let anything stop you, no way!
To end, another prayer. It’s called "blessing the boats" by Lucille Clifton:
(at St. Mary’s)
may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back may you open your eyes to water water waving forever and may you in your innocence sail through this to that.
Explore further
01 : The King of Prayers translated by Jesse Fenton
02 : Sedaka Sutta: At Sedaka, 1: The Acrobat translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
03 : Sedaka Sutta: At Sedaka, 2: The Beauty Queen translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu