The Unbinding
Photo by Miltiadis Fragkidis
December 8 was Bodhi Day, the celebration of Buddha’s Enlightenment. In this talk, which brings a weekend sesshin to a close, Zuisei speaks of the Buddha’s life of practice and realization, focusing specifically on the aspiration, courage and determination that supported his vow to awaken. Most importantly, she links his aspiration to our own, stressing the point that we have everything that the Buddha had, which means that we too can awaken; we too can reach “the Unbinding.”
The Buddha may have had to walk the path on his own, but we have his inimitable example, which can always be a source of inspiration.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
Transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
In the most recent newsletter I sent, I said that every once in a while, when I feel that my practice needs a little inspiration, I turn to this story of the Buddha's enlightenment. When I do this, I don't just read the story. I really try to place myself in his shoes. I imagine him as this young wanderer at the point in which he has just left his teachers, having realized that their path is not his path and that their teachings would not lead him to the liberation he was seeking. I spend a little time trying to imagine him really mastering their teachings. There are at least two or three teachers with whom he practiced intensely who are mentioned specifically in the sutras. He reaches a point where they say to him, "You know what I know, so why don't you stay and teach with me?" I imagine the clarity, aspiration, and humility that it must have taken for him to realize, That's not it. I may have mastered these teachings, but I'm not any closer to that state. He calls this state The Unbinding—liberation.
Then he goes off on his own. There is this really beautiful passage in the sutras where he's traveling through the Magadhan countryside. He's very deliberately looking for a place to practice. It says that he comes upon this delightful grove. There's a clear flowing river that's running through it. There's several villages around so he knows that he can go on his begging rounds. It's solitary enough, but there's also people, a community, who he will need to depend on. He decides that this is the perfect spot, a sweet country. He takes his seat and he says, "'This is just right for the striving of a person intent on striving.' So I sat down right there, thinking, 'This is just right for striving.'”
For some reason I've always loved that particular passage. He looks at this spot and he says, "This is just right for striving." What makes that? Right now, where each of you are sitting, has that been the right place for striving this weekend? By striving, I mean not just in the sense of working and grunting through, but reaching, aspiring—maybe aspiring is a better word.
Wallace Stevens has a poem, “The Well Dressed Man with a Beard” where he says:
After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.*
And later:
One thing remaining, infallible, would be
Enough. Ah! douce campagna of that thing!
Ah! douce campagna, honey in the heart
Douce campagna is that sweet country—that infallible thing that would be enough. We could say that's what the Buddha was looking for: the thing that would lead to the end of suffering, the thing to rely on truly, the thing to take refuge in truly. After looking for that spot with others and within their teachings and deciding that it was not there, he finds this little piece of land, this sweet country, honey of the heart—I like that. He sits down. Even though, ultimately, he must have known that the sweet country is inside, not outside, because he was the Buddha-to-be, he also must have realized, Yes, but it helps. It helps to have a place to practice. We know that. Whether it's that little corner in your room, or it's a whole zendo.
When I think of this, I think of Daido Roshi. The story goes that in 1980 he climbed through the window of the dining hall of a Lutheran camp, which before was a Benedictine monastery, because he had heard that the place was for sale. He broke in, essentially. He climbed into the dining hall, walked up the stairs, and he stood in the hallway looking at what was at that point a chapel with its high ceilings, a light-filled room, and rows of pews. When I first went to the monastery, I didn't know what job I'd been given but for some reason I had to go get something from storage in one of the old A-frames. All the pews were still there. They had saved them. Those of you who have been to the monastery remember that the bench in the hallway is one of the pews. I imagine him standing in that hallway with his hands on his hips, already seeing the zendo—straight clean lines, perfectly aligned zafus and zabutons—and thinking some version of this is just right for striving.
There are a couple of different versions in the sutras. In one of the versions the Buddha sits down, and he then proceeds to do the six years of ascetic practices. I don't know if you've ever read those descriptions, but they are something. He goes through a period where he decides to stop breathing to see how long he can go without a breath. He describes this sound like thunder or like wind in his head, and, of course, he passes out. So that doesn't last very long. He describes eating less and less and less and less. He gets to a point where his hair falls off at the roots just when he touches it because it's rotted. When he touches his belly, he actually touches his spine. When he tries to relieve himself, he's so weak that he just falls flat on his face. At one point, he actually says, "I have gone as far as any human being could go without dying. I could not work any harder. And this has not taken me any closer to liberation."
Then there's that moment, the sutras say, when a young girl comes forward and gives him some rice gruel and he takes it. The ascetics that were practicing with him are just disgusted that he's now living a life of luxury. It actually says that in the sutras. He's afraid they're going to think that now he's living a life of luxury because he took a little rice gruel. They abandon him, basically. There's that moment after the final no and before the first yes.
This is such an uncomfortable, excruciating moment in practice. We all go through this, though not quite to that extent. It’s the moment when you know without a doubt that what you've been doing so far is not working, that you are at the end of your road. You don't know yet what comes next. You don't know how to do what comes next. It's painful, and it's confusing. It's scary. I think that you can remind yourself, or, if you have sangha, they can remind you that after that final no, there comes a yes. You can trust that. After not this, not this, not this, not this teaching, not that teacher, not this painful striving, there is another way.
For the Buddha that yes comes when he remembers being eight years old sitting under a rose apple tree. In that memory he's with his family in the kingdom and it is the first ritual planting and plowing of the fields. It is the first time he's allowed to go. It's hot and it's crowded, so he takes shelter under a tree. He's looking at the scene and the oxen being driven. He sees an eagle grabbing a mouse and eating it. He sees all this life, all this death, all this striving and suffering, and he's wondering, What is all of this? At eight years old, he very naturally goes into this easeful and deep state of meditation. When he comes out of it, at least in one version, he says to his mother, You know, all this chanting that we do, all the chanting that the Brahmins do? That's not it. That's not helping. I wonder what the parents thought when he said that.
So roughly 25 years later, he remembers this time. He remembers this zazen. He thinks, Could this be the path to awakening? Could this be the path to freedom? I remember this when my zazen feels difficult, when it feels long, and when it feels painful. After all those years of study that the Buddha did, all those years of intensive practice, this is what he returns to—his body and mind and a very simple stillness and silence. This is the point where he resolves to not move from his seat until he's realized himself.
I think of this and I try to feel the courage and fearless determination that that must have taken. At the limit of the known, all he had was a sense, a wordless knowing, that he already had everything he needed to have. Everyone he needed to be, he was that. So he sat, silent and unmoving.
Then Mara's armies come and they wage war, as they do with all of us, with every weapon they have: greed and desire, lust, thirst, doubt, self-doubt, especially self-doubt. That's the biggest one, actually:
Mara says to him, “Who do you think you are, to awaken? What makes you think you can do this?”
He sits, hour after hour, day after day, facing these demons, staring them down. Finally he touches his hand to the ground, asking the earth to be his witness. He looks Mara in the face, which is really looking at himself. He says, “I know you. I know you, housebuilder. Now your rafters are broken, your ridgepole is destroyed. You have nothing left to build with. My mind is now at peace and what had to be done, is done.” Jesus' last words were, "It is finished." In all these great religious myths, religious stories, there is what had to be done is done.
He sat all through this long night, which lasted many days or many weeks, depending on the version of the story. It is said that the Buddha saw the lives of every being that ever lived. He saw every one of his lives and his deaths. He understood that everything is interconnected, that in every cell of the body is an entire world and that in every world, every cell contains another world.
There's a passage like that, in fact, in the Lotus Sutra. It describes this multiverse, essentially. In each one there's a little Buddha sitting on a mile high throne which means that this extends through all of space and time. This means that, here, worlds rise and they fall. So when something horrific happens—another shooting, another terrorist attack—it is just as my teacher would say: “This is heartbreaking, but it is not surprising.” That's why—another world rising and falling. He also saw how that happens, he saw the Creator and the Destroyer.
As this is happening, clouds start to gather over the Buddha. Thunder breaks, and it starts pouring. Out of the river, Nagaraja, the Naga King—the snake king—Mucalinda comes out. I love this part, I don't know why but I love this part. He comes out and he coils himself seven times around the Buddha's body. He fans out his hood, kind of like a big umbrella over the Buddha to protect him. He says that is his vow, he's going to protect the Buddha from the elements as the Buddha is sitting. I imagine these two entwined as the Buddha continues to sit until the rain passes. Then Mucalinda takes human form and pays obeisance to the Buddha. Then he returns to his underwater kingdom.
I confess I love imagining all of this. I love the magic and the myth of the story, but in the end what I return to for inspiration is that very simple, utterly extraordinary moment in which the Buddha saw himself and reality clearly. The moment in which he saw things as they are. It's because of that moment, that we are sitting here today
I think of this, and I think of my own life being just a tiny, tiny drop in the ocean that was the Buddha's life. I remind myself that being a drop, I am made of water, the same water. So, when I travel to my own sweet country, bordered by the edges of my Zabuton, I take my seat, I lower my eyes, and I let my mind settle. I remind myself for a moment of the power of vow. Of the unimaginable, quite literally, unimaginable reach of a single yes. A yes on which the future world does depend, on which every world depends. So in whatever small measure I choose this yes, I am choosing to, in my own case, bumble my way to the unbinding, humbly, for my benefit, yes, but also for the benefit of everyone.
Explore further
01 : Maha-Saccaka Sutta trans. by Thanissaro Bikkhu
02 : The Well Dressed Man With A Beard by Wallace Stevens
03 : Old Path, White Clouds (pdf) by Thich Nhat Hanh