Astor Douglas, Rev Master.

A transcription of a talk given at the end of a retreat on 1^st May 2011.

Homage to the Buddha, Homage to the Dharma, Homage to the Sangha

As most of you know we just finished up with our Meditation retreat, we had six and a half days of meditating, so I thought it would be very appropriate to talk about our meditation and practice. It’s something that I feel is good to review for all of us now and again.

And as we do each time we have a monks retreat, we said a verse, a wishing for what we wish for to happen in our lives and in the retreat that we are about to start. I’d like to read part of that because it was inspiring. Here we are at 4:30 in the morning on the first day of the retreat; Rev. Master Daishin Yalon had a candle light and opened a book and in the darkness of the morning, part of what he read was:

Let each of us, for the sake of his or her parents, teachers, elders and past friends and foes, worship the Buddhas with all our hearts, and with prostrations. Let us pray to be reborn in the land of the Eternal. Like fish with little water, what joy is there when we do not know the Eternal? Let all of us endeavour during the searching of the heart retreat for seven days to make the greatest of progress as if we were fighting a fire that was burning on our heads.

So we weren’t retreating from the world to get away from it, we were retreating from it so that we could give ourselves the chance to settle down and do some good meditation, and that’s what we did. We meditated throughout the day and that was the focus of the retreat.

So our practice is called “Serene Reflection Meditation” and I looked up what that meant as a way to educate myself and hopefully to inform you what “Serene Reflection Meditation” is. The Chinese translation of the word ‘Serene’ comes out as something that is silent and quiet. The thing that I like about it, is that the lips are closed. Hmm! What does that mean? Well it says to me that instead of being outward so much with the words, it is to be silent – and it’s not like buttoning up so we cannot say anything, but it’s more to give ourselves a chance to quiet down so that we can start to see the serenity and the stillness that is within ourselves and is actually everywhere. This is why we meditate, so that we can give ourselves a chance to quiet down and to learn to be still and see what’s there as we are looking at a wall.

The second character in the Chinese translation means brightness of the sun or to illumine, to reflect light, and the whole character is silent illumination. You have to have both the stillness and serenity and the illumination because stillness alone, just by itself, leads to stagnation and it’s really not that helpful. It is still, but it needs some energy and the energy is the illumination or the light. So the two of these together provides what our practice is and isn’t that a beautiful way of looking at it? It indicates the potential for what we can see in our meditation – in this serene reflection meditation or silent illumination meditation. I found that the ‘serene’ – that’s silent and still – and then the reflection comes across as the moon that is reflecting in water, in a pool of water – and that can be the stillness. When somebody throws something into the water, the waves in it mean you can’t see the moon; we lose sight of the Eternal, but It’s always there. It’s always there even though it’s in a way that we don’t recognise it. We can always know that it’s there and oftentimes that is enough to develop faith that it is there, and we don’t have to think that it’s ever lost because it’s not, it’s always right here.

You can’t have illumination alone; if you have too much light then you’re not grounded, you need to have something grounding in our practice. I feel like the stillness is the meditation which keeps us still so that when the light, the reflection of our own Buddha nature, is there then we can bring an awareness to that and this is what we bring out into our daily life.

It’s a high aspiration but there’s a reason that we call our practice Serene Reflection Meditation; it’s because it’s something that we actually have within ourselves right now and that is tangible. It’s hard to see that sometimes but it actually is there to give us hope and encouragement that we can find that place within our lives during the day. And what that’s based on is that we all have the intuitive knowledge of the Buddha nature within ourselves, and what our meditation does is it harmonizes ourselves with that which is within ourselves. It’s the deep reflective stillness, that pool of light that is always moving – the deep stillness.

And within that place we can learn to find contentment and that which we’ve always longed to find. However it’s not what we think it is, by far, in fact that’s the problem as we think that we know what it is – and it isn’t! We can recognise that; that’s a way of letting go so that we can open ourselves to that which is inside of ourselves. So why don’t we see this all the time? What’s the matter with us, anyway? Nothing actually; but we think there is and that’s the motivation that we need to get us to start looking for a better way to live and a better place to operate from. I found a quote that points to what the problem is: “Outstanding is our failure to realise clearly that letting go of thoughts and distractions is the practice at all times.”

So whether we are walking or eating or talking to people, it is that looking for, finding, something that is more important than what’s outside of us, that is inside of us, is something that we need to do – and that is to let go over and over again, of our thoughts and things that come up – but to do it with a gentle and firm focus. This is Serene Reflection Meditation after all, this is not clubbing ourselves or being hard on ourselves.

There is a gentleness and a focus that we can bring to our daily life that will help us find that place that we’re looking for. And we find this by letting go of thoughts and things that arise. In my mind it’s a misguided direction to attach our thoughts and feelings to ideas that haven’t really helped us out a whole lot anyway. Learning to simply let go, maybe we can find something that works better. If we talk about it too much, we’re missing the point – we’re not talking about something we really know. To get to the point where we know what we are talking about, we have to experience it. Without experiencing it, we really don’t know the richness of our practice. The effort is to develop meditation so we can bring it into our daily practice, gently and with awareness. It changes our perspective, because we let go of what we know (or even if we don’t know) and look at life with a more open mind. How do we do that? Through the practice of our meditation; it is the pillar of our practice, there is no getting around it. That’s how we find a deeper place within ourselves, it’s through the meditation practice and the reason is because meditation is actually experience: it’s not outside of ourselves but it’s something that we learn out of our experience. We’re the ones that have to do the work, we’re the ones that have to change our perspective, nobody else can do it for us.

I found a good story in this book: Zen Seeds, it’s a great book by a female Zen priest, Shundo Aoyama, who is still living I believe, and has a Japanese monastery. It’s called “Follow the flow of the stream.”

“A priest once strayed from the mountain path and by chance came upon Ta-mei’s grass hut. When he asked for the path leading to the village, Ta-Mei replied “Follow the flow of the stream,” which means that, if you simply follow the stream you will find your way out of the mountains. An essayist Wariko Kai, wrote this poem:

Although there are rocks and tree roots,

Rippling along, just rippling along.

The water runs.

If our ordinary self-centered viewpoint is dominant, rocks and tree roots are undesirable. But if we change our point of view, then the very fact that there are rocks and tree roots makes the valley stream more beautiful and the sight of waves breaking upon them beyond description. When we perceive joy, anger, happiness, and sorrow as enriching our lives, just as rocks and tree roots and water spray embellish nature, then we are able to accept whatever happens and live like flowing water, without clinging to anything.”

If any of you ever tried to walk down a stream that has a lot of rocks and tree roots you know it’s not easy going, in fact it’s really tough going. However, there’s something to be said for the rocks and tree roots because they have a tendency, for me anyway, to slow me down and take a look at what’s going on that I otherwise might have missed. I find that it’s a good way to practice patience; not being way off down the stream but actually where I am, right there, because it really does take that kind of concentration to be where you are to find your way safely.

I feel that that is the same with our spiritual practice; to be where we are is how we are going to find our way spiritually in a safer way, because we’re bringing patience and mindfulness to what we are doing at the moment, not being so far off down the stream. It’s also saying too that we’re not wrestling with the rocks, you know: “I wish that rock weren’t there, I wish that tree root weren’t there. Whoa! My goodness! Another tree I have to climb over.” You know that sort of stuff, just simply let that go and take the task at hand and wholeheartedly do what needs to be done at the moment.

What we are doing with our meditation is finding a way that we can do our way to practice. We are finding a way to take what we know in the Meditation hall, our Buddhist experience, our Buddhist teachings, and manifest it in our lives. We’re all very different and we all have to find that which we need to do. What our practice is oftentimes is a way of discovery; it’s not that everything’s set out and we know what to do or where we are going, but the way we find our way to walk in the footsteps of the Buddha is to take what we have learned and test it out, put it into practice. What that does is it makes it our own experience and it gets it out from an idea into something that we actually know something about.

I’ll give you an example: compassion for me has always been a very big word and has a lot of different meanings that I can’t say that I understand very well all the time. However, I have learned that by turning the stream of compassion within myself – and that’s also a big lofty idea – however, just by doing that in a way that is in the moment and is turning kindness toward myself, or kind thoughts. But really what it is too, is letting in the meditation and the awareness, in allowing that kindness to be there towards myself, in a gentle and beneficent way of looking at things. And what that does then is that it allows me to naturally be more outflowing with compassion. It’s a way to learn and it’s always there and a good way for us to learn to take something out of our Buddhist practice and turn it so that it becomes experience. Takes it out of the head and puts it into the body – into the heart.

As we take our practice and test it out and explore what we do in our daily life and use what we have as the testing ground, what we can do is right in front of us and oftentimes the steps are very simple and not super complicated, not heroic. And that’s where we can start to build a foundation; so that we can then build it stronger and stronger, and are then able to handle situations that cause us more problems, that are more inflammatory. But a simple step is very tangible – something we can all do, and it is not reserved for special people; it’s for all of us, it’s very doable, very normal, very down to earth. It’s not something lofty or intangible that we are trying to aspire towards, an idea, but simply right here we can do something for ourselves and for others by simply doing what needs to be done next. And that can be done with meditation and with mindfulness, so instead of taking a simple task and doing it in a way that is harmful, we can maybe change or mind, change our perspective and say “Well, I’m ready to try this in a different way.” This is what we can explore, do it in a way that is taking into account the meditation, Instead of doing something in a hurry, to slow down and to do it patiently and quietly.

One of the big things that I have also looked into is acceptance and I have found that when I am not accepting, there is an element of tension and that when I can simply relax within a situation and let things go, I can begin to see a way that things truly are. And again I don’t feel that that is a big deal, for years I wondered what that meant, it is to look at things in a way that is not born out of self interest, but is born out of meditation practice. We can do all these things, put the Buddha’s teaching into practice, make them our own and not feel that we are bound by what other people think or others have written, but to take that as an opportunity to see if what the Buddha taught is what we want to pursue. It’s up to us and in a lot of ways it’s not a big deal.

So I’m going to close with this poem:

Full seventy years and more have I beheld the clash and roar of human life and felt upon my breast the weight of right at war with wrong.

‘Til now my mind is weary and my spirit cries for rest,

This night the darkness deepens and the snow –

Like some kind minister to my troubled soul, falls softly

Holding close in the sleep the noises of the outside world.

No sound of any footstep comes this way to mar the stillness of this midnight hour.

Only my spirit moves as, bowed down before the burning incense which lifts its curl of smoke beneath my window,

I lose myself in silent meditation and touch the great wide world with prayer.

By the Buddhist monk Ryokan from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf  by Jakob Fischer (Tokyo: Kenkyūsha, 1954).

This article is available only as part of the Spring 2020 Journal of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives.  

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