KARMA & EMPTINESS IN THE YOGA SUTRA (PART TWO) Quiet Retreat Teachings by Geshe Michael Roach April 17 – 20, 2003 Diamond Mountain Retreat Center St. David, Arizona Karma & Emptiness in the Yoga Sutra, Part Two Morning, Day One – John Brady Morning: Day One D April 17 John Brady Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Diamond Mountain—this beginning of an amazing four days of teachings; the final remarkable teachings of the last three years. So, fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be wonderful. I think we can start with a 10-minute meditation and just quiet down for a bit. [Silence] [Mandala offering] [Refuge Prayer] So good morning again. Geshe-hla had asked me to address the teaching toward how we can continue our practice during the day, and during our work time. How do we bring this beautiful, extraordinary gift that we’ve had over the last seven years of ACI courses and Geshe-hla teachings. How did we pull this all together? Have a practice that can go back into the world and not be left on your cushion after your 8:15 alarm goes off. It’s so difficult to do that. Usually when I walk out my door in New York and I hit the street, the mental afflictions start pouring over me. So I’ve figured out a few ways to do that over the years and I wanted to share with you some of my kind of practical formulas that seem to work, in the work place, and whatever else we’re actually doing in our lives. We have to bring this practice to focus on the many things we do, in the multi-tasking we do all the time. Or else we’re just wasting our time. I think before I met Geshe-hla, I think the causes that I created to meet Geshe-hla were through Zen study. And I began like this Zen-head in 1984. I started reading a lot of books on Zen and one of them turned me around; Roshi Phillip Kapleau called it “The Three Pillars of Zen”. I think he wrote it in 1973 and he took the veil off the mysticism of Zen Buddhism, which the Japanese had kept secret for many years in terms of the inner workings of how their systems of meditation worked. And it was really the first time in America, this invasion happened in the late 60’s and then the beginning of the 70’s when he was funded to start centers. And his book led me into a Zen path for a while. to New York, I was looking in a bookstore one day and I found Suzuki Roshi’s book “Zen Mind-Beginners Mind”. Which again, was this beautiful masterpiece of how to maintain mindfulness in your life. The little bookmark, which came with the book in this oriental bookstore I was in on West 57th Street, had a message. It said do Zazen now! New York Zendo, East 67th New York. I read the book and tucked it away. One day I passed the place and I knocked on the door, but there was no one there. There was a schedule. “Thursday night, 7:00PM, come and learn how to meditate.” And so I went, and that was the beginning of a ten-year relationship with Zen. It became almost this obsession. I had just entered a new job, and what I learned was that the balance of work was not in my thinking. I would do twelve, fourteen-hour days and then go home, collapse, and do it again. 1 Karma & Emptiness in the Yoga Sutra, Part Two Morning, Day One – John Brady And so when I entered this path, the first thing that I found remarkable about it was you entered this carriage house, in this non-descript building on East 67th Street, and you entered this remarkable space. And you know, looking back now the actual esoteric nature of Zen Buddhism is this stripping away of external stuff. So you walk into their space and there’s nothing but sheer, almost emptiness. It’s almost… The metaphor of emptiness, an internal relationship with Zen is the space itself. It just, it exudes it. You know, present is your alter and your condiments of your alter, and then these Zen lines, the Zazen cushions that run in straight lines. In this particular sect of Zen Buddhism, Rinzai, practiced by the shogun class of Japan, who brought it into their culture full force and so it’s of this military form. But these lines, again, reminded me of almost tantric lines, where everyone sat in these perfectly three foot square zabuton cushions and faced the wall for forty-five minutes to watch and count their breath. So I jumped onto this path. The Teacher was this colorful character named Edo Shimano Roshi, who I thought was the real thing. He was the dharma heir of Yasutani Roshi and Soen Roshi, from Ryotakaji temple in Japan. The lineage really went back to Bodhidharma who brought this into China. In the fifth century, 565 – 575 AD, and then traveled over a thousand years and entered the Japanese culture around the 13th or 14th century. So I started doing these little mini four-day retreats. You know, Friday night you check your business bag and you put your dress on, your robe. Everyone had black or brown robes, so this similarity of space created fewer distractions. Distractions were always eliminated. So robes were essential when you were in this practice. And that was the beginning. I began with this, this kind of silly thing sitting in front of a wall with your eyes open and counting your breath. And I started to realize I could definitely bring something under control in this state. The components of Zen have evolved over the last thousand or twelve hundred years, where they’ve stripped down so much, but the essence of the practice is still there. And the relationship to the teacher is a very formal but also immediate connection. So when you do a retreat in the Zen style you cook. You actually cook. You do these fifty-minute rounds of meditation. You will start with forty minutes, and then work up to an hour. And you start at five in the morning. You do a round of Zazen meditation. You have a breakfast, and you do a walking meditation. You do 3 more sets of meditation, and have a lunch. You do some work, and then go back to the cushion, and end at nine o’clock. So it’s kind of like this pressure cooker. It’s kind of incubating this energy; eliminating, stripping away the conditional patterns of our thought processes. And the rules were that you did not go up to see the teacher until the second or third day, when he felt you were actually maybe ready to have something to say to him. And this was the whole key. You really had to cook in a way that had some meaning, and something that gave you credibility in front of this heavyweight. And so there was a whole procedure. Say at two o’clock everything was set up and the Roshi went up to the third floor of the building, and his assistant would be on the second floor—I didn’t know what to do. They tell you nothing of how to construct this procedure. But the bell rings, and then everybody high tails it up these stairs, like a fire just hit the building. I mean they just whip up off the cushion and just climb up the stairs and just sit in front of this bell, and the first one who gets there just slams on the bell. And then he runs up and sees the Roshi, and everybody else lines up in a pattern waiting his or her turn. 2 Karma & Emptiness in the Yoga Sutra, Part Two Morning, Day One – John Brady And then you test your skills; you test what you know in front of this being. And so, I didn’t go the first time. I was just too intimidated. It was just so overwhelming. He had this presence that was so overwhelming. And I just stayed on the cushion and suffered more. You know, it’s just a matter of when is the break? And how can I get this courage up to connect with this guy? And so the next day I just kind of stayed low and kind of did nothing. And then I did, finally, run up. And you had this beautiful 19th century bell from some gorgeous temple, and the block is 200 years old as well. And you hear this bell go off and then you high tail it up there, and you do your prostrations, and you get ready to present whatever you want to present: your question or your introduction. And I knew that the Japanese were quite formal in their way, so I kind of did my prostrations and sat in front of him. And he sat there just blank faced, no emotion rippling over his face so you couldn’t read him. And I introduced myself. The only thing I could do was say, “you don’t know me, I’m new here, I’m willing to learn, and I’m hoping I can get some advice from you in terms of how I can do this practice”. And he finally broke, and had this big gorgeous smile.