Tag Archives: Thich Nhat Hanh

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sati

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Sometimes looking at something from a different point of view helps.  After last week’s exploration through Daido Loori’s book Teachings of the Insentient, I’ve been getting down to earth – literally.  Lying on the deck now free of the twigs and bark from the fallen maples, I looked up through the tulips and daffodils.  The red tulip looks like a lotus and in my mind, it is a lotus.  In the Ultimate reality, it is both tulip and lotus – and neither.  Petals, leaves, chemicals, cells, and so on are all the same, only coming together in a different form.  Actions can be like that too.

The story of Hachiko (all in the waiting) opened my heart to skillfulness in waiting all the while wondering what sustained his daily return to the train station.  (Yes, the psychologist in me can give you many explanations based on reinforcement theories!)  If I get out of my head and into my body/mind the story also opened me to a felt sense of what it means to walk this path in the way I do.  At certain junctures of my practice, I’ve become swallowed in what can only be called “ownership” of and by others.  Dharma teachers and sangha members generate a multiplicity of relationships and, in our humanness, many have resulted in leaving, letting go, and sometimes even becoming invisible.  Walking on after the loss, regardless of the support, and with only a deep abiding belief in the path of service has required digging deep to uproot my desires and greed.  Slowly I begin to see it all differently; that it is love which propels me forward and sustains my faith.  It is what compels me to return at each prescribed hour, like Hachiko, to wait for my teacher, the present moment.  It is by this ritual of returning that I strive to honour my bond with the Buddhadharma.

In Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem “Recommendation” I can see the edges of what it means to practice faithfulness:

Alone again, I will go on
with my head bent down,
knowing that love has become eternal.
And on the long and difficult road,
the light of the sun and the moon
is still there
to guide my steps.

Perhaps once grief has softened, it becomes a simple ritual of sati, which is translated as mindfulness, remembering.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

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river of being

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Thich Nhat Hanh has one of the most beautiful explanations of emptiness (shunyata). He describes the Five Skandhas or Aggregates as rivers that flow in us.  Each contains the other four and every cell is a drop of water in that river.  A feeling in one skandha (for example pain from a headache) can be linked to any of the others (perceptions, interpretations, or becoming aware of the physical pain itself).

Look deeply into the five rivers of yourself and see how each river contains the other four.  Look at the river of form.  In the beginning you may think that form is just physical and not mental.  But every cell in your body contains all aspects of yourself….  Each aggregate contains all the other aggregates.  Each feeling contains all perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.  Looking into one feeling, you can discover everything.  Look in the light of interbeing and you will see the all in the one and the one in the all.  Don’t think that form exists outside of feelings or that feelings exist outside of form.

from The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings by Thich Nhat Hanh

More important, we become confused by associating the suffering we feel with the arising of any one or all of the aggregates.  It’s so easy to blame my miserable mood on the pain in my back from the herniated discs.  It’s convenient to rant at the driver who cut me off when I’m actually feeling disregarded by the actions of another.  I still struggle with the reality that the aggregates – or my sensory interaction with my environment – is only what it is.  Some how it always seems the cause of my suffering.  And, of course, thinking it is the cause, I attempt to eradicate the senses rather than taking a more generous stance to them – and deal with the real source of my misery.

It is not the Five Aggregates that make us suffer, but the way we relate to them.  When we observe the impermanent, nonself, and interdependent nature of all that is, we will not feel aversion for life.  In fact, this knowing will help us see the preciousness of all life….  The root of our suffering is not the aggregates but our grasping.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju