The following is a talk, the third in a series, given while people were sitting in formal meditation during the New Year Retreat at Throssel, 2022.

The audio of this talk can be found on the Throssel Hole Abbey website.

The Uses of Sorrow
(in my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

Mary Oliver

We love; human love is essentially conditioned love, due to our functioning as we do within the world of subject and object, the everyday world of duality, Samsara. Our attachments are subject to change, as is everything. There is sorrow. There is love lost, and there is transformation. Attachment and detachment flow together throughout our entire lives.

Over time, we gain an appreciation of existence as a gift, (this too is a gift). And out of gratitude, we give gifts. We receive gifts, the gift of friendship for example, where exchanges can easily become a subtle ‘currency’ which we keep tally of – if we must! Too bad, our relationship with money is so linked to ‘paying for’ something.  ‘One good turn deserves another’, ‘pay my way’, ‘mustn’t impose’, ‘pull my weight’, ‘be indebted to’… Guilt and shame follow.

“In my sleep I dreamed this poem…” Interesting, even in sleep teaching comes to us. Insights, which remain long enough to remember, and in this case, to be written down. As a way of letting them go, people sometimes write such insights down and offer them on their altar. Writing helps us move on past that which is so tempting to hang onto.

It is not unusual for people to have a deep insight into the way things are at a relatively early stage in their practice, and that can left foot/destabilize them. And those individuals sometimes recount (as adults) an expansive, ‘without edges’ level of appreciation; they perceive the ‘whole’ with themselves not apart from the whole. They may feel themselves to be not separate from chimney pots, or clouds! What they remember is less to do with discreet ‘insights’ or ‘understandings’.

One reason for this, (and there has to be a complex understanding around children’s perceptions) is the fact that children are usually less conditioned by their experience, compared to older people who have had more time to accumulate experience. Younger people will be more likely to encounter the world with fewer filters between themselves and the objects they encounter, that is, less colouration between a sense (eye) and its object ‘out there’. Less of a distinction between inside them and outside of them.

Coming back to the here and now: having been on retreat, doing lots of meditation, stilling the senses and having entered into the process of ‘undoing/letting go’, the senses become less grasping. Which means one’s mind encounters the world differently. Less ‘going out’ and more allowing sight, sounds, smells etc, to come in. Allow your eyes to see for you, your ears to hear for you.

Having a flash of insight into the way things are (sometimes referred to as ‘self-teaching’) occurs spontaneously when we are less  preoccupied with our busy internal world and external world. Here for example is an insight which came to me in the early days of my monastic training – ‘we don’t train in order to be enlightenment, training IS enlightenment’. Such realizations are not the ‘whole truth’, or better put: ‘a complete turning around’. More a snapshot; an insight into the way things are; a clarification or reinforcement of the words of a Scripture. In my case, I remember clearly everything about that moment of clarity/insight – but I don’t carry it around in my head, repeating it. Obviously.

Remember from the explanation of the Skandhas, the 5^th one is Consciousness: the eye, the object it encounters and that which is conscious, these make up our experience. Interpose a ‘filter’ between eye and object – a view, opinion, or as I’ve put it frequently ‘a label’ then on a certain level our view is ‘coloured’. In fact, our entire experience is coloured, we are conditioned beings. Our perceptions will always be coloured, and knowing that is the case can bring about humility ‘I could be wrong’, or ‘I could be right.

Here in the recording below is an example of somebody who had a vision, one of several, and was encouraged, by me, to write  it down with a view to letting it go. Brenda speaks from the heart, with humility.

Let Flow the Golden Tide – Brenda Birchenough

The retreat ended this sunny crisp morning. Time to stop and reflect.

I am at a service station on the M6, in transit to stay with relatives for a couple of nights. Goodness, there is a two and a half hour queue to charge electricity powered in your cars. I’m driving a hybrid.

Below is the gist of the talk I gave here on the 30th during a retreat. People were sitting in formal meditation at the time.

The audio of this talk can be found on the Throssel Hole Abbey website.

Here goes:
The Five Skandhas are a traditional Buddhist way of analysing a human being by conceptually splitting the self into five component parts. They are:

Form – which has to do with the material, or matter, we are made of;

Sensation – to do with information coming in through the senses whether pleasurable, painful or neutral;

Thought – our language system, mental images, symbols and words – which we use to organize and structure our experience coming in through the senses;

Activity (or volition) which has to do with emotions, a moving outwards beyond our self, emoting something, giving expression etc. (greed, anger and delusion are three main ways of acting), and

Consciousness  – this has to do with the five senses and their objects. (Three aspects of each sense combine, e.g.  ears, a sound and consciousness. There is a sixth sense, mind – relating to the deepest level of our mental functioning – what we ‘know’).

You could follow this link if you are a ‘consciousness’ aficionado because ‘consciousness studies’ is a HUGE and often hotly-contested area of academic study and debate. The link will explain for you the Buddhist take on consciousness…..

It is very easy to misunderstand The Scripture of Great Wisdom as saying there is no self, no individual person, no sentient beings even, which doesn’t mesh with everyday experience. We experience ourselves as a sense of self, which comes and goes in our conscious awareness, as needed. What’s being pointed out is, on the deepest level of understanding, there is no SEPARATE, unchanging, ‘self’. (Anatta*)

In the Scripture, Kanzeon is talking from the deepest wisdom of the heart, and knows that not only are ‘selves’ not separate, but that the senses are not separate from their objects either, e.g . there is no ear separate from sound; no taste separate from tongue, etc. This seems to not mesh with experience either! So, if the teaching embedded within The Scripture of Great Wisdom is not understood fully in terms of deepest wisdom, life would get seriously strange. Obviously!

In the last few lines of the Scripture, there is a clear instruction to keep moving on continuously from what’s known and understood, because anicca (change, companion to anatta) is always in operation. Rev. Master Jiyu would often quote the ending lines when somebody was having a persistent difficulty.

O Buddha, going, going, going on beyond
Always going on
Always becoming Buddha.
Hail, Hail, Hail

“And don’t forget the Hail, Hail, Hail”, she would say.

While keeping this ‘going on’ instruction in mind as a reminder of impermanence, there is the encountering and appreciating of the world of appearances, and acting (or not acting) within it. We can also appreciate the apparent separateness, plus accept and deepen our understanding of the Scripture.

Rev. Master used to describe this ever-changing interconnected universe (without edges) as flowing, like a great river. And the way to train within it is simply to trail one’s open hand in the flowing waters. When we do that, over time, we find there is no separateness between what we call us and the universe, between our hand and the flowing water. Any time we try and grab or push away ANYTHING we immediately feel the separateness, in one way or another. Is that not how ‘saddened love’ is generated?

Talk Two given on 30th Dec, New Year retreat 2022-3.

*There is an important story that is used to help people understand the idea of anatta. It is called Nagasena and the Chariot. The story is about a monk called Nagasena, who visited a king called Milinda. The king asked Nagasena for his name. Nagasena gave his name but then told the king that this was just his name and not his real person.

Copied from a BBC website.

This is a talk I gave this morning to the people here on retreat until the 2nd January. Thought you might want to see it.
The audio of this talk can be found on the Throssel Hole Abbey website.
When the opposites arise, it is written in the Rules for Meditation, the Buddha Mind is lost. I’d like to say lost sight of, since I don’t think one can lose the ‘Buddha Mind’. Or you could say, one can’t lose one’s nature as a Buddha, that is an enlightenment being. Whatever one’s views are about oneself and others and no matter how unenlightened one’s actions and the actions of others might be – the fundamental enlightened nature, Buddha Nature, is there. Neither lost nor forsaken.  How could it be otherwise since there is no (separate) eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind as it is stated in the Scripture of Great Wisdom. The no is actually mu which means empty, immaculate, pure. Rev. M. Jiyu translated mu as pure in an attempt, I believe, to help westerners to not trip over the alternate words – empty or Immaculate. But we can trip over anything, if we have a particular function of our minds switched on. Then over time, become fixated on a particular understanding of this scripture – perhaps remaining for the rest of one’s life! How sad.

The functioning of our minds is miraculous, and not fathomable by the ‘ordinary mind’, the mind caught in the opposites.  In the blessing verse recited at the end of meals, we have; Pure and beyond the world (of the opposites of the world of Samsara) is the Mind of the trainee. O Holy Buddha, we take refuge in thee. That’s a statement of faith right there.

And so we sit, just sit, which in actual fact is a 24/7 ‘activity’ not just in formal zazen. This just sitting requires of us an exercising of faith/trust with the clear and firm intention to keep returning to just sitting throughout the day (and night). It requires of us to trust the process one enters into when dedicating one’s life to spiritual practice. Paramount is the refraining from evaluations (labelling) ones ‘progress’, or lack of it, and refraining from evaluating others around you; or those who come into our world of awareness. There is a way of thinking and being and acting which one can deliberately choose not to nurture the habit of swirling around in the opposites, mentally and emotionally. All the while Nirvana, or that which lies within Samsara is lurking, calling to us, nudging us to return to effort/awareness (the two are inseparable) return to clear, bright intention

There is a choice. Formal Zazen has a particular place in this choosing because one CHOOSES, deliberately decides to allow projects, planning, and pain to subside. This can take time. It takes time for a boat, having crossed a lake and arrived at a dock, to stop bobby around in the water. It takes time too for the wake generated by its journey through the water to catch up with it, and then settle. Eventually, if the boat just remains by the dock it will settle, stop moving and be still. So too with us when we settle to sit.

Actually there is a power in deliberately and consciously deciding to do something, Zazen for example, when you want to or could do, something else. Even as you settle by the dock (so to speak) you can remake your decision, your intention to ‘just sit’, no add-ons. Yes, the pain and the plans and the projects and whatever else will arise, naturally enough. It is not so easy however to ride out the waves when there are painful thoughts, feelings and emotions. From the past, in the present, or fear of the future. Here, now, the Buddha calls – SILENTLY!

I’ll read you a poem now, by Mary Oliver. It is short and quite unlike the majority of her poems. It speaks of love (saddened love- a box full of darkness, from one once loved) and loss and transformation.

The Uses of Sorrow
(in my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

Mary Oliver