Devotion
Photo by Sergio Capuzzimati
In this talk on devotion, given during a virtual weekend sesshin, Zuisei speaks of the mind of devotion and its relationship to sacredness and caring for all beings and things.
It’s never been more important to cultivate an attitude of care and reverence for this world and for one another. How can we use the teachings and our practice to remind us of the sacredness inherent in all things?
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
Transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
I wanted to continue what I started speaking about on Wednesday when I gave a talk on the power of bow—bowing as in prostration. I was speaking about it in terms of devotion, and I've been thinking about it a bit more because of everything that is going on in the world—everything that seems awry. I think this is a good time to dig deep, look for, and make use of some of the tools that Buddhism offers to care for this world and ourselves in the midst of it.
I was saying a few days ago that, in general, we're not a devotional or reverential culture. When we look at the conflict in the world, all of it arises from separation, this false sense of separation. If somebody were to ask me to describe Buddhism, using no technical terms, I would say it's about getting close. Or it's about seeing that the distance that we experience does not exist in reality. Bowing is a really nice entry point into that closeness because of what it is and what it expresses, because it engages the whole body. In Zen we say that you just eat, you just walk, you just sit, you just cook, you just wash your dishes afterward. What's implied in that just is unity, intimacy, the closing of that gap. It is very easy to say and not so easy to do when the mind is moving very fast. So a good deal of practice is about slowing down. Slowing down enough to locate ourselves in space and to also let go of that location, let go of that separation and just do what we're doing.
Somebody sent me an article about a man who lost all memory. He does not remember anything from a few seconds ago all the way to the time when he was born. Essentially his entire past has been erased. Also, every moment that passes is erased when he enters the very next moment, which in Buddhism is some infinitesimal amount; a moment is very, very short. His wife says that he blinks and already it's a new life for him. What I was struck by is that we speak of that intimacy in terms of freedom and wakefulness. For him, it seems like it has been an absolute hell because he doesn't know who he is or who anybody is. This freshness is actually a burden for him.
It just made me think of the necessity of having both sides. We do need to know who we are. You need to know where you end and I begin. In order to navigate the world we need to know past, from present, from future. Also, to be truly liberated, we need to be free of past, present, and future. It reminds me of the koan that says, “All things return to the one. What does the one return to?” This expresses both sides.
In a moment of full prostration, whole body and mind, the whole universe is prostrating. That is what is happening. You're not prostrating to anything. There is no one prostrating, there is just that movement into emptiness, if we need to describe it in some way. I’ve been reflecting on why that constant realization, that seeing again of that truth, is so important. Because, in separation is conflict, in separation is suffering. The gap between this is and I want, is the place where suffering blooms. It is also the place of practice. It is where we understand, oh, there's a difference in my mind between this and that. The teachings are telling me there is no difference fundamentally. So how do I close that gap? How do I see that that gap does not exist?
The well known saying of Zen that “a hair's breadth of difference is the distance between heaven and earth” is true. The moment we separate, even a little, it's already the distance between heaven and earth, but that separation does not actually exist on a fundamental level. At the same time, we have to pay the bills, we have to take care of this body. Some people need to raise children and go to work. You also need to be a body in this larger body that is the world.
Returning to devotion, if we think of it as reverence, as respect, as commitment, as wholeheartedness, as sincerity, then that bow, that aspiration to close that gap or to be free, is contained in devotion. We normally think having devotion is for those things that are special or unique. Of course, fundamentally, everything is unique.
An unusual example of devotion is in a story I read some years ago. Jack Kornfield was working with what he calls wisdom resolutions. As he takes his seat for meditation, he gets quiet, and then he invokes a particular phrase that is his intent for that period of meditation. The story happened early on in his practice, and he was doing a retreat. He took his seat and thought, May I have a clear realization of emptiness, but he got confused. Instead of saying shunyata, he said anicca, which is actually the word for impermanence. But he didn't know that. So he thought that he had sat down and was wholeheartedly, wholebodily, saying, May I have insight into emptiness. So he sat and did that for a few days, and at one point, he had a deep, clear realization into impermanence.
He was confused; reality was not confused. Reality knew exactly what was needed. Through the power of his devotion, his aspiration, his zeal, he was able to realize the thing he was really asking for, without even knowing. Isn't that wonderful?
We don't even need to know, intellectually, that what we're doing is having devotion. It really is an attitude—I was going to say of mind, and if we take mind to be the whole thing, then yes. It's an attitude of being. It's a whole turning in a different direction. Normally, we don't tend to see the world like this. We're such a throwaway culture. We see human beings as supreme. We take from reality, from the world, what we think is ours and what we need to fulfill our desires and to have the life that we want to have. I've been thinking about this so much because I'm in a beautiful place that is also a resort place, a vacation place, a party place. It's painful to see. I don't know how much of it is willful disregard and how much of it is just blindness, not seeing how much we take. How much we take that has absolutely no relationship to what we give back, certainly, to the planet. How quickly, easily we discard what we think no longer serves us. This is just one example, I could go almost anywhere in the world and see the same. We would see the same.
You could say that having a devotional attitude is the opposite. It doesn't necessarily mean you go to church and prostrate yourself in front of a crucifix or do 108 or 100,000 prostrations in front of the Buddha. More generally, as an attitude of deep care, it’s not wanting to chop up the world in little bits and say, this is important and this isn't. This deserves my attention and my regard, and this doesn't.
In Mexico we use endless and endless plastic bottles because we can’t drink tap water. So when somebody can reflect on the fact that this bottle came from somewhere and is going to end up somewhere, how do I live my life to take that into account? When we take off a piece of clothing, how we fold it and set it down—it doesn't have to be obsessive, but to consider that someone made that piece of clothing. Many “someones” with lives, with histories and desires of their own. All of it is helping, in this moment, to support me and serve me. How do I serve it in return? To me, that's really devotion. How do I serve it in return? Each of us might choose to do it in our own particular way. Some people will do it through very overt environmental work. Some people will do it with social action. Some people will do it simply in their sphere, their own buddha field, their own sphere of influence.
When my brother died thirteen years ago, the man who took care of his funeral—I will never forget him because of the way he did his job. This funeral director was one of the most present, most loving human beings I have ever encountered. He knew what somebody in that situation goes through in general terms—the distress, the sadness, etc. He had made it his life to do everything in his power to serve in that moment. He's not Buddhist, he's Christian. I think he was a little weirded out, in the beginning, when we came from the monastery and did the whole cremation part of the funeral. Normally, when people have their relatives cremated, they just deliver them, and then they leave. They don't want to be there. They don't want to witness. They certainly don't want to participate and press the button. We Buddhists go right in there when it comes to death. We were right in there, not just for my brother—which I was there for and did press the button for—but for other funerals that we had at the monastery. We do a whole service right there at the crematory. This is the body going on to its next passage, its next life. We don't want to miss that. Even with all that, he very quickly recovered and said, “Of course.” I think it may even have been against regulations, but he figured it out so that we could do it. I will never forget him and the way that he was with me. But I could tell that this is how he met every single person. He was trying to make this difficult time a little bit easier—a pretty extraordinary human being.
What shape it takes is much less important than that mind, that being, of devotion. I think of what it means to live a life of practice. Really, we could take away everything. We could take away the buddha statues, we could take away the bows, we could take away the chanting. We could even take away zazen—which would be very sad, but we could take it away. What we would be left with, of course, would still be this body and mind. What would be left would be that desire to be fully in this life, not just getting through it, not just getting what we think we need, but to be fully in it, participating, serving, giving back.
This way of being, at a certain point, becomes an imperative. When you see that you’re responsible for the whole thing because you are the whole thing, then it makes it harder to just coast. I guess it's always possible to go back to sleep, but it becomes harder. I've said that practice really messes you up. [Laughs] All the stuff that you mindlessly enjoyed before gets harder and harder to do. I think that's a good thing. If you're at the edge of practice, beginning practice, get all the wastefulness out of the way and then turn wholeheartedly to it. That way you won't feel deprived. Then, I hope, it's actually not a burden. Then taking responsibility for the whole thing really just means being fully in your life. It doesn't mean you do it perfectly, and it doesn't mean you take care of everything, because you can't.
There are twenty-four hours in the day. How do you use them, as Master Zhaozhou said, instead of being used by them?
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