Resilience Summer-Fall 2018 Photo Credits
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The Zen Practitioner’s Journal Resilience Summer-Fall 2018 Photo Credits MOUNTAIN RECORD Dharma Communications President DC Director of Operations MOUNTAIN RECORD (ISSN #0896-8942) is published quarterly by Dharma Communications. Periodicals Postage Paid at Mt. Tremper, NY, and additional mailing offices.Postmaster: send address changes to MOUNTAIN RECORD, P.O. Box 156, Mt. Tremper, NY 12457-0156. All material Copyright © 2018 by Managing Editor Dharma Com mu ni ca tions, Inc., Unless otherwise specified. Printed in the U.S.A. The articles included and the opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors, Who are solely re spon si ble for their contents. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions, positions or teachings of Zen Mountain Mon as- Editor tery or the Mountains and Rivers Order. Layout Cover Image: Over Burma by Joel Sparks Production Assistants: Bodhichitta is the generation of great compassion, which is all-encompassing. It extends to all beings everywhere. Such compassion cannot rest for even one moment—it is ever-present for the sake of others. —Tenzin Palmo Vol.36 No.4 Summer−Fall 2018 Resilience 4 Practice and Resilience by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi Master Yanghan’s teachings on discovering our inner resources in the Dharma. 18 Mountain Record in Transformation by Danica Shoan Ankele We are re-envisioning how we provide the MRO with news & teachings. 20 Remembering Love, by Lama Rod Owens Living, healing, and learning to be well. 32 Practicing the Good Heart, by Tenzin Palmo How to turn around whole within our connectedness. 40 I, Lalla, poem, by Lal Dêd 42 Standing in the Shadow of Hope, by Austin Channing Brown Not taking goodness for granted as a fix-all solution. 48 A Great Challenge, by Thanissara The Buddha’s teaching on resilience in action. 54 There’s No App for That, by Richard Heinberg Community and collaboration is our only viable future. 62 The Fork, poem, by Chase Takusei Twitchell 64 Fear in Two Winters, by Hanif Abdurraqib Faith in a shared truth of something greater. 72 Always An Immigrant, poem, by Margaret Gibson 74 Shantideva’s Heroic Perseverence, by Pema Chodron In taking responsibility, resilience and strength. 82 Mountains and Rivers Order News News and Happenings, Sangha Reflections, Affiliate Directory 105 Resources and Services Photo Credits—Inside Back Cover Practice and Resilience by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Roshi 4 From the Record of Master Yangshan: Ho-shang Mi of Ching-chao sent a monastic to ask Yangshan: “Right in this very moment are you dependent on enlightenment?” Yangshan said “There is no absence of enlightenment. Why fall into the secondary?” 5 o-shang Mi was a peer of Master Yangshan, a very important Chinese H master in our lineage. Here he asks, right in this moment are you dependent upon enlightenment? Enlightenment is to see into the real nature of things—the nature of the conditioned self, your unconditioned nature, time and circumstances, the whole universe—and to realize that all things have one essence, which we speak of as “emptiness.” In this original state, all of creation is present: form is emptiness and emptiness is form. Those two phrases are the essence of Mahayana Buddhism. We typically think of the path of enlightenment as a movement from dwelling within a realm of delusion, pain and suffering to a realm that is free: the enlightened realm. We may think of it as something we don’t yet have, but will obtain with realization. When the monastic sent by Ho-shang Mi asks—right in this moment are you dependent upon enlightenment—he is asking: Is enlightenment something apart from you, is it outside, what is it? As practitioners we might see ourselves as depending upon the Buddhadharma, upon zazen, upon the sangha, upon the conditions necessary for practice. Let’s consider dependency from the point of view of the Two Truths. There is the relative realm, the world that we see and can talk about and meet every day. And there is the realm of the absolute, in which there is no time and place, no circumstance and characteristic. Within the relative world, we depend upon oxygen and food, water and warmth, sunshine and rain. We depend upon each other, upon a sufficient amount of trust and mutual respect to share in this life together and make it work. We depend 7 upon awareness, upon a relative degree of is absent. Nothing is self-existent. This is physical health, mental health, emotional why we have to find a direct way, beyond health. In practice we depend upon loving all concepts, to realize the unity of the Two kindness and compassion, upon the faith Truths. This is why in zazen we deliberately that wisdom resides within each of us. The let go of the secondary—of the thinking relative is the realm in which we practice mind that creates and constructs—and and move through our day, relying and cultivate a deep faith in another realm of depending upon these things. knowing, another kind of understanding. From the realm of the absolute, how do We turn towards the fundamental. And you rely upon something that has no form? so “why fall into the secondary” is like How do you rely upon something that is asking “why seek peace and comfort in timeless? How can you rely upon anything false illusions?” In false illusions there is no when there’s not a single thing that has absence of enlightenment, there is just our permanence, that is solid and fixed? In inability to see, and that’s one of the most realizing that there’s no past, present critical aspects of practice. The image is or future, how then do you understand often used of a magician, skillful at turning evolving in realization within our lives as our attention to what they want us to see. practitioners? So delusion is a kind of “slight-of-mind,” a Here, all things arise at the same instant. trickery that happens in our mind through There is mutual dependency. The moment imputing meaning. light appears, there’s darkness, the moment Within this realm of ordinary delusion, there’s up, there’s down. In order for there everything is there. Nothing is ever hidden. to be subject there has to be an object, for Because of how our minds are, and our there to be male there has to be female; senses and consciousness, we only see enlightenment and delusion need each certain aspects of things. That’s what we other. All dualities are mutually dependent, call delusion, which is just the sense of self: which is, in fact, not dependent at all. in each moment, in every experience, in They arise together, simultaneously. To things that appear before us and things that talk about “co-dependence” or “mutually are happening within us. The sense of an dependent” is just another way of saying autonomous self is the sense that something “not dependent.” So when Yangshan says is happening to us, and that in each “there is no absence of enlightenment” we moment there is someone continuous at the can see that at every moment there is no center. And it’s this—placing ourselves at absence of formlessness, of impermanence, the center of each moment—that breeds of timelessness. Then he says “why fall isolation and estrangement. Yet all along, as into the secondary?” The secondary is the Yangshan says, there is no absence, nothing realm of duality, of samsara, of conflict, is missing and nothing has arrived. of two. In each moment, in every breath, Realizing the true nature of self allows us in every encounter, in all circumstances: to live our lives within that understanding. why fall into the secondary? There’s not And because of this, because there is no a single thing that stands alone, nothing absence of enlightenment, in all moments 8 in all circumstances there is falling to the Zen about cultivating pliancy within our ground and there is using the ground to mind, a softness, a suppleness, which has stand. There is meeting an impenetrable the capacity to bend and respond in accord barrier and there’s leaping free of that barrier. with the moment. Rather than reacting in There is studying the self and forgetting the accord with our past experiences that we self, there is holding on and there’s letting overlay on reality, we’re able to respond in go. There’s giving up and there’s taking the accord with what’s actually happening. We next step. There is resilience. cultivate this capacity in zazen, developing the mind of equanimity, of stability; we Resilience is a powerful and essential part begin to discover that there is space and of Buddhist practice, which means it’s an time within which to see and move. essential part of human life. Within Zen In reactivity there’s very little gap, if any, we speak about the three essential virtues that we see between what happens and our of practice: Great Faith, Great Doubt and response. You say something and someone Great Perseverance. Resilience is related to gets angry and responds—and because perseverance which is also is critical for the there appears to be no gap, their perception spiritual path. Resilience is a manifestation is that “you did that to them” and made of emptiness. Resilience is the act of them angry. When we look more closely we rebounding, to jump or take a leap, to be see this isn’t so. flexible. In a moment of defensiveness the sense When we’re caught in our deluded stream of self experiences a threat, and instantly of thoughts and emotions, reactivity and we can become upset and hardened, like beliefs, tethered to our ingrained habits, building a fortress to defend ourselves from there is very little resilience.