Strange zen dream last night... there were initiation rights about getting into YUZ... one had to prove oneself to be accepted into the group. The dream was shadowy, all the colors were dark, the atmosphere was bleak and somber.
I fluctuate with YUZ - at times I am very excited about building the sangha; at other times I feel like my relationship to zen has been more geared towards socializing and less towards zazen, the precepts, or deepening the sangha. At my most cynical (yesterday) I feel like its not even a sangha - just people using the group and the readings and discussions as an opportunity to hang out rather than to deepen their practice and learn to support one another (including myself). I feel blessed that a single period of zazen wipes out such cynicism. I know its much harder for many people...
We usually break up into groups and discuss a reading, which is what we did last night. There have been other discussions where I haven't spoken - but those times, I was just consciously observing. Last night was the first time where I really felt I had nothing to say. It was more than that - I felt like I wasn't a part of it. I even felt alienated, on a different page. It has absolutely nothing to do with the group - purely a dynamic within myself.
I spoke up one time during the large conversation: someone had mentioned that the mind is never completely still. In response, someone mentioned that reciting Buddhist spells can lead to complete stillness of mind. There was a silence in which I felt compelled to speak up in the spirit of solidarity: "I appreciate you saying that - some of the calmest moments in my life have been while reciting a mantra for hours".
But part of me really wanted to burst that bubble of silence and address whatever lay behind it: "I find that really interesting. There is something about recitation that stops the mind. Event though you are speaking words, the mind has stopped, is far more still than we ordinarily experience while in zazen. Reciting a mantra, there is not a need to concentrate, to attempt to do anything - the mind is simply still. Which makes me want to ask, what is the benefit of, or what is profound about the still mind... as opposed to the mind that is involved in noticing? (I recently re-read an essay I wrote about yoga years ago - I consciously refrained from describing Patanjali's descriptions of various stages of samadhi because I couldn't understand them, and I still can't comment on various stages of stillness of mind today. His definition of yoga as the cessation of the minds activity has always stuck with me).
"Regarding spells, in so much of the Buddhist world, spells are very real. People will write the Heart Sutra on their bodies to ward off ill-will, or recite a mantra to gain the favor of a deity. And in the West, we might judge that - we might judge any belief in magic, or any belief in a deity or bodhisattva. The impulse to judge may be so strong that we fail to recognize what a profound spiritual practice it is. The impulse to reject something like magic may be so strong that we don't even attempt to make sense of it.
"For us, bodhisattvas can only exist as allegories or archetypes. Perhaps we can accept that Buddhists hold these beliefs in other countries, but we feel awkward when a Buddhist who believes in magic or spells comes to the United States and talks about it (but for some reason westerners who reject magic or deities find reincarnation appealing... but for some reason most westerners find a soul going to heaven more sensible than a soul being reincarnated. I think the reasons behind this are primarily sociological). Maybe we'll even be deluded into thinking we're being historical and say that the Buddha de-emphasized or even rejected deities and magic, despite knowing full well that his teachings weren't actually written down until Buddhism became a state-sponsored religion a couple hundred years later. But why do we make such arguments or experience such discomfort? Where does that judgment come from? Why do we assume that we know what magic is, or what spells are? Where do we get our conceptions of those? From fantasy novels and movies? From Richard Dawkins-style anti-religious polemics that have been handed down to us from the time of Voltaire? Such polemics are as deeply ingrained in our culture as Protestantism and we should reject their inheritance".
I feel like all of that would have been out of place to say, but that's what I was actually thinking. My concern was simple: perhaps this is a man from Southeast Asia, and spells are an ordinary part of Buddhist life. And then he comes to the Zen Center and gets judged for it, despite the fact that profoundly wise people from all cultures have believed in magic (Socrates (through Plato) and Issac Newton included...) Now, I have no idea what the real situation is, but I always err on the side of supporting what someone has said unless its clearly harmful, and then I try to say something that helps the speaker recognize the harmfulness of their speech without feeling attacked.
As far as the precepts concerning speech go, speaking "truthfully" is rarely the issue: how do we speak in such a way that supports all beings? Last night, I had a great deal of trouble in figuring out how to do so.
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