Great Determination: Three Essentials of Zen
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In the third talk in a series on the Three Essentials of Zen, Zuisei speaks on the third essential: Great Determination.
Determination is not an obsessive nor heroic quality, but rather, it is our humble, steadfast commitment to waking up—through the good, bad, and mundane.
“[Great Determination] knows what it is capable of,” Zuisei says. “It knows—without even knowing how we know—that this path is not only walkable, but that we will do it; that we are doing it.”
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
This transcript is based on Zuisei’s notes and might differ slightly from the final talk.
When I re-enter, alone, the city’s crush
and its chaos of noise
and the fury of traffic surrounds me,
may I, above that hammering confusion,
remember sky and the mountain slopes
where the herds are still descending homeward.
May my courage be like those rocks
and the shepherd’s daylong work seem possible to me—
t
he way he drifts and darkens, and with a well-aimed stone
hems in his flock where it unravels.
With slow and steady strides, his posture is pensive
and, as he stands there, noble. Even now a god might
secretly slip into this form and not be diminished.
In turn, he lingers and moves on like the day itself,
and cloud shadows pass through him, as though all of space
were thinking slow thoughts for him.
I’ve been exploring the Three Essentials of Zen: Great Faith, Great Doubt, and Great Determination. Having spoken about Great Faith and Great Doubt, now I turn to Great Determination, the one that holds them together on the path.
The poem I read is the third in Rilke’s “Spanish Trilogy.” I think it works nicely as a kind of invocation for great determination. May I, in the midst of chaos, in the jumble and noise of my mind, or the jumble and noise of the world, remember sky and mountain slopes. May I, in the midst of hammering confusion, remember space and silence and the ground under my feet. May my courage be steadfast like a rock that does not crumble. May this great work of waking up seem possible to me, and not just possible, but claimable as my right, as my very nature. Which means, that even in my darkest hour, my grimmest moment—I am still sky and slope and light.
May I never forget this, and if I do, may my noble friends on the path remind me, may my steadfast vow remind me.
I had been thinking recently of the “Lorica of St. Patrick,” a prayer I stumbled upon by accident a few years ago. This poem of Rilke’s reminded me of it again. A lorica is a Christian prayer of protection, a “breastplate” is the direct translation. You could say it’s similar to our dharani. The Sho Sai Myo Kichijo Dharani which we chant every morning is a dharani to avert disasters. It is thought that the very sounds themselves create the protection—not the meaning of the words or the content of the chant. I wonder whether if it is actually the sounds, or the mind of the one who chants them.
Just imagine what it is you’re invoking during that morning service. Never underestimate the power of a concentrated mind. This lorica is a Gaelic prayer St. Patrick supposedly sang when Loegaire, King of Ireland, ambushed St. Patrick as he was riding through the woods. Loegaire wanted to prevent St. Patrick from bringing Christianity to his country. St. Patrick found out that the king and his men were waiting for him, so he sang this lorica to protect him and the group of monks that rode with him. One version of the story says that the song then produced a “mist of concealment” that protected St. Patrick and his monks. Another version says that the song cast a spell on the Kings’ men and made the monks appear as a herd of wild deer with a fawn in their midst. Sometimes this prayer is also called “ The Deer’s Cry.” Either way, St. Patrick was saved. This particular lorica is asking for God’s protection, but in one section it is really the protection of Creation itself. It reads:
I arise today through the strength of heaven,
light of the sun, splendor of fire,
speed of lightning, swiftness of the wind,
depth of the sea, stability of the earth,
firmness of the rock.
The early sutras speak of us human beings as composed of the five elements: fire, water, air, earth, and space. Let me, through these elements, be: strong, clear, firm and fiery. Let me draw upon every good quality I see in myself and in the world—for I will need it for the work ahead. I think of Ki and how I draw upon it when I feel mine is flagging. I draw from the energy of the mountain and the air and trees and rocks. From the rain…Why wouldn’t I be able to draw from the energy of the world if I am the world itself? Why wouldn’t I be able to draw from your energy, and you from mine?
Later the lorica turns toward light and invokes its protection:
Light with me, light before, light behind me, light in me
Light beneath me, light above me
It’s good to remember that without light, there are no shadows. So those dark corners in ourselves, those aspects of our personality we would rather not acknowledge, rather not deal with… their root is still light, which means we can’t just cut them out.
May my courage be like those rocks and the shepherd’s daylong work seem possible to me—
What makes our work seem possible? I’ve been reflecting on this. Why is it that sometimes we look at the path ahead and it looks inhumanly steep. It looks impossible? And other times we think—I can do this, I will do this. When we think, “I’m not good enough” or “I can’t do this,” how do we know this is true? What is the this that we can’t do? Sit still? Be with our breath? Let go of a thought? Here we all are, doing it—moment by moment. We’re doing it.
We let go of that thought. We are with that breath. Sometimes it’s smooth, sometimes it isn’t, but we’re doing it. “I can’t do this” is just another thought, and it’s not even a true one.
Maybe we think great determination and we think heroic. We envision sitting through kinhin, or sitting long into the night. We think of dropping away of body and mind. Or, at the very least of not getting annoyed again at the person at the sink during dish duty. We think great determination looks like something. But, it doesn’t really. Just as practicing the breath, or a koan, or awareness, doesn’t look like something—that is simply our idea of practice. Once we dispense with it, we can get down to the business of actually practicing.
Great determination is great because it turns toward rather than away from. It doesn’t shy away from what is difficult. It is great because it is steady and confident.
It knows what it is capable of. It knows—without even knowing how we know—that the path is not only walkable, but that we will do it and that we are doing it.
That moment of knowing that you’re going to do it is that confident faith I spoke of before. You trust the dharma, you trust your practice and your ability to practice.
And, when you need to, you get help. That is what liturgy is about—face-to-face teaching and study.
Tom Brown speaks of Native Americans who would travel with a small piece of live coal so they would always have the ability to start a fire. They carried it with them and cared for that most precious of resources. I think of samadhi in this way, the careful protection of your mind.
Guishan is sitting alone when Baizhang comes into the darkened room and asks him, “Who is it?” “It’s me, Guishan.” “Why don’t you poke the fire?” Baizhang says, pointing to the fireplace. Guishan gets up, grabs a poker and stirs the ashes around. “There’s no fire,” he says. Baizhang grabs the poker from him, stirs some more, and finds a glowing ember. He holds it with a pair of tongs and shows it to Guishan. “What is this?” he says. At this, Guishan becomes enlightened. But, Guishan was not just sitting there spacing out. The fact that he became enlightened tells us that he’d been practicing diligently, probably for many years. So, how come he didn’t find the fire and Baizhang did? He doesn’t find it, there’s nothing there, and when Baizhang holds it up… he gets it. What is that moment of turning?
There is a sutra in the Pali canon called the Dhatu-vibhanga Sutta in which the Buddha is traveling through the countryside. He stops at a house and asks the owner if he can spend the night in his shed. The owner says, no problem, except there is already a wanderer staying there. This wanderer, turns out, had heard about the Buddha and his teachings and Great Faith arose in him. He’d never met the Buddha in person, but just hearing his teaching, he decides to leave home and find the Buddha so he can become ordained. That night, when the two meet, the wanderer, not knowing who the visitor is, invites him to share the shed with him and he spends most of the night in meditation. The Buddha is struck by him and decides to find out more.
“Out of dedication to whom have you gone forth?” the Buddha says. “Who is your teacher? Of whose dharma do you approve?” And Pukkusati the wanderer says, “Out of dedication to the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, I have left home. He is my teacher. It is his dharma that I approve.” The Buddha then decides to teach him anonymously.
I think what a wonderful moment that is for Pukkusati. He can just meet the dharma directly. Not knowing that it’s the Buddha in front of him, he doesn’t get nervous, he doesn’t feel intimidated, he has no preconceived notions. He’s just listening to this other wanderer speak.
It makes me think of times I’ve sat at a dining room table during an introductory retreat when a participant unknowingly sits next to Shugen Roshi and they ask him, “Have you been here long?” Roshi smiles very innocently and says, “A little while.” Then they have a conversation. And later, when the person comes upstairs to the zendo for the introduction to the retreat they realize, “Oh, I was sitting with the abbot, OH!” But for that half hour, they didn’t know, so they could just be themselves. They could just meet themselves and this other person.
Eventually, Pukkusati does figure out that it’s the Buddha who’s talking to him, and he asks if he can become ordained. Among the things the Buddha teaches him, is that a person of the Way has four skilled determinations:
1. To be diligent about discernment or right view
2. To guard truthfulness
3. To be devoted to renunciation
4. To train in equanimity
Right view is the understanding of the Four Noble Truths, of suffering and its cessation.
But, when he refers to discernment, he’s saying it’s knowing about the five elements that make up a person, to which you add consciousness. And he says, “Just like when you rub two sticks together you can make fire, when one of your senses makes contact with something pleasurable, the feeling of pleasure arises. But when you separate the sticks, the fire is stilled, pleasure is stilled, and all that remains is equanimity—a mind that is bright, luminous, and pliant—like gold that is heated so it becomes soft and malleable and you can make anything you want out of it.”
You can see that the four determinations are closely tied together. First we see rightly: I’m made of fire and water, air and earth, sky and clouds and trees and mountains slopes. I’m also made of the senses and consciousness, with which I can feel three kinds of feelings: pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. When I come into contact with something, one of these three arises. When I stop the contact, the feeling dies down, just as a fire cannot continue when you stop rubbing the sticks together. So the question becomes, what kind of fire do I want to create and maintain? Which fires will I carry with me, stoke and fan? Which will I let die out? Answering this question requires discernment and truthfulness. It also requires renunciation of that which will not lead to equanimity, that which will not lead to clarity or to stillness of body and mind.
But let me add to these four determinations the seven qualities that the sutras say are needed to cultivate loving-kindness. I’m bringing these in is because I so often hear about how not loving we are toward ourselves, let alone others. I also bring them in to stress the fact that determination is not cold or calculating. That’s why the phrase emotional intelligence is so nice. If you ever worry about becoming too soft, God forbid, you can think about it as developing your emotional IQ.
These seven qualities are:
1. Knowing all sentient beings to have been one’s mother
2. Reflecting on their kindness
3. Repaying that kindness
4. Having a gentle approach towards self and others
5. Having a compassionate, sympathetic attitude
6. Going beyond your own limitations
7. Having an ever-present, constant, pure attitude
Is it difficult to believe that all beings have at one time been your mother? What about the beings you don’t like, or the ones you never think about? Caterpillar or a slug: “Were you my mother?” Yet, even science is showing that we share at least 99% of our DNA and are 50th cousins to one another. If you look far enough back, it doesn’t seem like a stretch that every being you encounter was, at one time, your mother. You regard all beings with that kind of respect or gratitude. Although, I suppose it depends what kind of relationship you’ve had with your mother, whether this view will work for you or not. But the intent of this quality is cultivating love and respect and gratitude.
Understanding our interdependence, our interbeing, we then reflect on the many kindnesses we have received (from the food you ate today, to the room someone cleaned for you, to the clothes you’re wearing). Reflecting in such a way, we determine to repay that kindness in small and large ways. We determine to be gentle and compassionate. We determine to be non-judgmental. At the same time, we don’t assume this is how far we can go. How do we know how far we can go until we test it? Sesshin is a nicely controlled environment for that testing. You think you need eight hours of sleep? Let’s see. To eat whenever you want, have constant access to your phone, have a way to numb out when things get to hard. Well, let’s see if that’s true.
The last quality is to have an ever-present, constant, pure attitude. I hear this primarily in the sense of honesty. I am honest with myself about what I’m saying and doing. It goes back to the determination to be truthful, that’s how consistency comes about. And, if I could humbly add one more quality, I would say it’s to cultivate courage.
St. Teresa of Avila: “It is of great importance, when we begin to practice contemplation, not to let ourselves be frightened by our own thoughts.”
May my courage be like those rocks
and the shepherd’s daylong work seem possible to me—
the way he drifts and darkens, and with a well-aimed stone
hems in his flock where it unravels.
A well-aimed stone is my intent, my aspiration. No, not that thought, this one.
No, not that fantasy, my breath. As my mind is beginning to unravel, I bring it back to itself, gently but firmly. I do it as many times as necessary, because my determination is great and it is steady.
With slow and steady strides,
his posture is pensive
and, as he stands there, noble. Even now a god might
secretly slip into this form and not be diminished.
This posture too is noble. A god may slip into it secretly and not be diminished in the least. In fact, a god, a goddess, has slipped into it and not even slipped into it but claimed it as his own, claimed it as her own.
In turn, he lingers and moves on like the day itself, and cloud shadows pass through him, as though all of space were thinking slow thoughts for him.
So, let me leave you with a question…What kinds of thoughts would you think if you let all of space think slowly for you? What kind of thoughts does space think?