What I Speak about when I Speak about Love
Photo by Garrett Jackson
Zuisei shares how the practice of love is the heart, the path, and the realization of the dharma.
This talk draws on “Mountain Dew Commercial as a Love Poem" by Matthew Olzmann, the Vimalakirti Sutra, and the mystic text, The Cloud of Unknowing.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
Transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Hello, everyone, it’s so good to be with you.
Here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriage
might work: Because you wear pink but write poems
about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell
at your keys when you lose them, and laugh,
loudly, at your own jokes. Because you can hold a pistol,
gut a pig. Because you memorize songs, even commercials
from thirty years back and sing them when vacuuming.
You have soft hands. Because when we moved, the contents
of what you packed were written inside the boxes.
Because you think swans are overrated.
Because you drove me to the train station. You drove me
to Minneapolis. You drove me to Providence.
Because you underline everything you read, and circle
the things you think are important, and put stars next
to the things you think I should think are important,
and write notes in the margins about all the people
you’re mad at and my name almost never appears there.
Because you make that pork recipe you found
in the Frida Kahlo Cookbook. Because when you read
that essay about Rilke, you underlined the whole thing
except the part where Rilke says love means to deny the self
and to be consumed in flames. Because when the lights
are off, the curtains drawn, and an additional sheet is nailed
over the windows, you still believe someone outside
can see you. And one day five summers ago,
when you couldn’t put gas in your car, when your fridge
was so empty—not even leftovers or condiments—
there was a single twenty-ounce bottle of Mountain Dew,
which you paid for with your last damn dime
because you once overheard me say that I liked it.
This poem is called “Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem” by Matthew Olzmann. It may seem like an odd poem to start a dharma talk with, but I believe that it captures, very beautifully, the kind of ordinary, whole-bodied, whole-souled love that we need to have for ourselves and for our lives in order to be free—the kind of love we need to practice the Dharma. I've always thought that poetry is the every person's Dharma because it shows directly what our lives are about without explaining. That's the difference between having a delicious meal and just reading the menu. It pairs well, I think, with dharma.
In the beginning we come to practice, and there's so much happening. There's so much changing and so much challenging us, and it's exciting and difficult, and captivating. If we've gotten past the first period of zazen (silent meditation), it has us in its grip. Then after a while, we sort of slide into a period of amnesia. It gets challenging to practice—specifically, to sit—and we forget why we're doing it. We forget how important it is for us. The original fire becomes a cooling ember. Of course, this can happen with anything in our lives. Anything that is not nurtured, that is not fueled, dies over time. The only thing is that this is about our lives. It's about living our lives more fully, more freely. When our very life gets in the way of this—illness, relationships, work, children, parents—well, first, we can look right there. What does it mean for these things to get in the way, when they too are our lives? We divide them into the many do's and shoulds of a life. Sometimes we think they're not practice.
Sometimes it does get harder to turn in, especially when turning in hurts. Maybe it hurts physically; if we're ill or in pain, it is difficult to sit. It's also difficult when it hurts emotionally, when we can't stand to be in our own skin, to be with ourselves, as I often say, even though in many cases, this is exactly, exactly what will help us heal. Sometimes we don't know if it will help or if it will make things worse. We just have to try. Remember that first inkling we had when we realized, Life doesn't have to be this hard, when we realized there may be, if not an easier way, a smoother, fuller path? If we could remember this, if we could hear our own whisper that said, Look, then we would know that this love that Olzmann is describing, this love that I'm offering, presenting tonight, is not about denying the self or being consumed in flames. It's more of a slow, steady burn, and instead of denying anything (how do you deny a self that is not there?) instead of giving up anything, it's about taking it all in, the whole thing, every single item contained in every single box we have been lugging around all the many years of our lives. It's about knowing how to use every one of those items as a resource for love.
I speak about love often. The reason is that I believe it is what is needed to save our lives. Just after I finished writing this talk this afternoon, I got a newsletter from The Atlantic. The headline said, “America Is Pursuing Happiness in All the Wrong Places,” and the tagline, “The US is undergoing a crisis of our personal and shared sense of meaning as polarization rises and institutions erode. The solution is as simple as it is difficult. Love one another.” It's written by Arthur Brooks, the former longtime president of a public policy think tank. A few years ago, he quit his job to teach about happiness at Harvard, of all places, and to write for The Atlantic about happiness. “The way to get there,” he says, “is to love one another.”
There are many ways to talk about love, but this is what I'm speaking about when I speak about love: loving who you are, and what you do, and how you live, so completely, that nothing is left out, including the parts of yourself that you are crazy about, the parts you can’t stand. Do I need to say that the same goes for others? It means to love beyond good and bad, right and wrong, this and that. It means to love so completely that you can no longer call it love. You can just call it life—your life. Maybe don't even call it that. Just live it. Do you know when we say the Four Bodhisattva Vows—we're going to save all sentient beings, we're going to put an end to desires, master all dharmas, attain the unattainable? We're really saying I will love this life completely, I will save this life completely. I will practice, and realize, and actualize, leaving nothing and no one out. I won't just say I'm going to do this. I'm just going to do it until it becomes as natural as breathing.
One of my favorite passages in the Vimalakirti Sutra is the moment when hundreds of thousands of beings are all crowding into Vimalakirti's house. Vimalakirti is the layman who was said to be as enlightened as the Buddha and who would go into the places that monastics would not go: the brothels, the farmhouses, and the bars. In this case, Vimalakirti manifests himself as sick. He's made himself sick in order to teach them and everyone. We shouldn't just rush past this line. He made himself sick in order to teach everyone, meaning, when I get sick, there's an opportunity to let it liberate me. There's an opportunity to see something so simple, and so difficult, and so profound, that it can be potentially life-changing.
So all of these hundreds of thousands of beings, anyone from the king and the queen to the townsfolk, and then some eight thousand Bodhisattvas, five hundred disciples, a great number of Sakras, Brahmas, Lokapalas, and many hundreds of thousands of gods and goddesses, all crowd into Vimalakirti's tiny house. When I read a passage like this in the sutras, I essentially think, inconceivable. They're trying to tell me that what is happening right now, what is being described right now is beyond imagining because anything I can imagine, anything I can conceive of, is too limited. They all follow Manjushri to visit Vimalakirti because the Buddha has asked Manjushri to inquire how Vimalakirti is. He's actually asked a bunch of bodhisattvas, and they've all said, No, he's too scary. He's going to engage us in Dharma Encounter, he's gonna beat us to a pulp. We don't want to go. Finally, Manjushri says, Well, this is really hard, but yes, I will go.
They all follow him and crowd into the little house. Magically, the house becomes empty, to accommodate everyone. Somehow these hundreds of thousands of beings all fit into this one room house. Except for the couch, where Vimalakirti is lying, there's not a single seat, not a single chair. Shariputra looks around and he thinks to himself, there's not even a chair in here. Shariputra, poor Shariputra, is the fall guy in the sutras; he always is made to look a little bit dumb as he asks the question that everybody wants to ask but is too embarrassed to do so, so that he can be taught. He thinks, Well, where are all these Buddhas and bodhisattvas going to sit? Now, again, this may seem silly, but think that the people who wrote down these teachings, they weren't mucking about. They had no time to muck about. They had devoted their lives to your liberation, my liberation, so none of what is written down is extra. None of it should be taken unquestioningly, but I think we do well to take it and investigate it.
Shariputra asks, "Where's everybody going to sit?"
It’s a reasonable question, except they're not there to engage reason. They're not there to debate. They're not even there on the surface to discuss the Dharma. They are there to free themselves and Vimalakirti knows that. He reads Shariputra's mind and he says, “Reverend Shariputra, did you come here for the sake of the Dharma, or for the sake of a chair?”
That may be the single best line in all of the sutras—did you come here for the Dharma, or did you come for a chair? When you first sat down to do zazen, did you come for liberation or did you come for company, comfort, escape? All the many reasons why we come to practice, they are not wrong, but they could also not be the Dharma, in the way that Vimalakirti is pointing to it. Just before, I said, Nothing is excluded. Nothing is left out.Exactly, but we have to know that, and we have to use it that way.
Shariputra, abashed, answers, "No, of course. I came here for the Dharma, I did not come for the sake of a chair."
"Reverend Shariputra, those who are interested in the Dharma are not interested in a chair,” Vimalakirti says.
Here, I'm paraphrasing. They're not interested in words or the intellect. They're not interested in the Three Realms or the Three Treasures. They're not interested in producing or destroying. They're not interested in the Four Noble Truths or in liberation. The list goes on.
Reverend Shariputra, if you are interested in the Dharma, you should take no interest in anything.
What? When someone asks you, "How's the show? How's your day? How's the food?"
You say, "It was interesting." Of all theory, all the practices, all the dharmas, Vimalakirti is saying, Do not be interested in them. Don’t be interested in what I have to say. Just practice.—like in the Kyojukaimon, Master Dogen's commentary to the precepts, the Tenth Grave Precept: Realize the intimacy of things, do not defile the Three Treasures.
Someone asked me, "How can you defile the Three Treasures? The Dharma cannot be defiled." Exactly.
That precept is pointing to exactly this. Master Dogen essentially says it. He says, “Living the Dharma with the whole body and mind, is the heart of wisdom and compassion. All virtues return to the ocean of reality. You should not comment on them. Just practice them, realize them and actualize them.”
My first teacher, Daido Roshi, would say to a monastic, “Can you do x?"
The monk would say, “I'll do my best.”
Roshi would respond, “No, no, don't try. Don't do your best. Just do it.”
Just love them, I would say, giving your last damn dime, to your liberation.
The fridge is empty. There's nothing to show in it, except this last one can of Mountain Dew, of all things. Take that and awaken. You take the aching back. You take the broken heart, you take the shitty job, the child's tantrum, the thought that says, I can't, I can't, I can't. Love that so thoroughly, that it sets you free. That's what Vimalakirti is saying. That's why this is not special. It's why I chose this poem that shows a love that is so ordinary, and in that ordinariness, magnificence. To sit down on our seat, to count our breath, to let go of a thought, is as ordinary as losing our keys and finding them. It's as ordinary as underlining passages in a book that you want to remember and then slowly and steadily, letting those passages become your life.
I speak about love because it is what's needed to save our lives. I speak about it so that we all know we don't have to worry if we don't understand the teachings right away or we don't understand our lives or aspects of our lives. In fact, that's a very good start—to let what we don't know be larger than what we think we know, to be willing to turn again and again toward what is most important, even though at times it seems dry. It seems pointless, too little, too late. See, all of that is irrelevant. That's what this kind of love shows us.
The author of “The Cloud of Unknowing” says, and again I'm paraphrasing slightly:
With all due reverence, I go as far as to say that it is useless to think you can nourish your contemplative work by considering your or reality's attributes, your kindness, your dignity, or by thinking about the bodhisattvas, or about the joys of heaven. Wonderful as these might be. I believe that this kind of activity is no longer of any use to you. It is far better to lay your mind rest in awareness, in existence; and to love and praise. To let your mind rest in awareness in naked existence, awareness of naked existence.*
I'm gonna read that sentence again:
It is far better to let your mind rest in awareness of naked existence and to love and praise reality.
Love and praise your life, for what it is. It's like that.
Explore further
01 : Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem by Matthew Olzmann
02: Vimalakirti Sutra, Part 6, The Inconceivable Liberation translated by Robert A. F. Thurman
03 : The Cloud of Unknowing introduction by Evelyn Underhill