Fuden Nessi, Rev. Master

The following is an attempt to speak about a process, or movement, that is most important in our spiritual life. To start with, here are two diary entries from the past year, slightly paraphrased:

… When I went up to meditate this evening, there was at first just a sense of diffuse suffering, expressing itself in a whole variety of personal images and feelings. I felt deeply sorry for this state of being. As I tried to be there with all of this, as open and still as I was able, something started to shine through what seemed at first like an all-encompassing state of being lost. After a while, there was just deep gratitude that there is the True Refuge. That It does not exclude any states of suffering. And gratitude that we are able to perceive It and bring our life in harmony with It. This in turn gave rise to an offering of merit to beings who find themselves in states of deep fear, and who have not yet found the Refuge for themselves …

… This morning, when making bows during Morning Service, with my forehead touching the bowing seat, I felt acutely in my consciousness, many residues of things past. It felt almost like these residues were all there was to my life. As I asked for help from the Buddha and looked at the Buddha statue on our altar, suddenly I only felt gratitude. Gratitude for what is now. For the fact of having the possibility in my life to keep turning towards the Buddha within the heart; deep gratitude also for Reverend Master Jiyu, for having shown us so clearly what is needed from us for this to be able to happen. There was the wish to give of myself as fully as I can …

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I have related these two diary-entries because for me they express, in a distilled form, something of the profound merit that comes from the Buddha-Dharma, and of the spiritual process that is set in motion in us by this merit. When we recognize the workings of this merit in our life, naturally there arises in us the question of what is asked of us, so that we can keep aligning our life with it.

At the very core of this, is the effort to turn within and be still within what is being projected in our consciousness at any particular time. When we do this, our gaze turns towards the Buddha in our heart. This is not something that is far removed from us. We keep finding how to do this by doing it, and through that we become more familiar with it.

Particularly at times when we are inwardly under siege and feel lost in life, we may at first only see the images that our habitual mind-patterns generate. When we are still though, something in us reminds us that this is not all there is. It beckons us to look deeper and take refuge at such times: “What your mind is projecting right now is not all there is. Gather your mind and heart – you are capable of doing this. The heart will point you then to its True Refuge.” When we heed this prompting, it is as though a gap appears in our perception of things. A gap that we could not even have imagined was there beforehand. What shines through this opening is the help that comes from Buddha. This reminds me of something a great master said: that when we look toward Buddha, Buddha looks toward us.

I have also observed this dynamic at times when I had a negative view of someone, and at first just believed the wave of corresponding thoughts that went along with this view. How easily do we believe in the validity of such thoughts! If on such occasions we are really intent on looking towards the Refuge after realizing what is going on in the mind, our view is turned around, away from what is a mere distortion. It is as though True Reality prompts us to look towards It: “Don’t just blindly believe and go along with this distorted view. You have seen on so many occasions that there is a much more truthful dimension of reality. Trust it, look for it.” Time and again we see that, when we follow this prompting, the way we perceive becomes so much more generous, understanding and imbued with empathy.

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The principle of not just going along with what the conditioned mind throws up is also crucial when it comes to repentance. Though it is important to look openly at what the mind reflects back to us, without the effort of taking refuge within the heart, it can easily happen that something will try to make us look down and resign ourselves: “Yes, you keep trying, true. But your effort is simply not good enough. This fact has been made clear to you so many times before, has it not? What you are now seeing in yourself just confirms this!” How important it is to counter this voice with the refuge-taking heart, when this happens.

When properly understood, repentance is upward-turned and liberating. Even while we may deeply regret something and even feel ashamed, it softens our heart and points us in the direction of what is good, the direction of the Precepts. It counteracts self-condemnation and our tendency to create or reinforce a negative self-image (or in fact any self-image), which is so unhelpful.

Repentance opens us for the intuition that, what has been confused in the past and led to unwholesome actions, and what may still be confused in the present, is not something solid and unchanging. It is not separate from our True Nature. The image in Reverend Master Jiyu’s book How to Grow a Lotus Blossom¹ of a person standing in gasshō within the not of Eternity (representing Eternal Love), surrounded by a murky smog, reminds me of this. The smog signifies the seeming uncleanness, which is often all we end up seeing when we only look with the eyes of self and firmly believe in the reality of the self-image we generate. Only if we are inwardly in gasshō and take refuge, as the person in this image, can we intuit the truth of what Reverend Master Jiyu is pointing to here. All the pained and confused parts of ourselves are embraced within the Goodness of Buddha Nature. When our heart comes to know this, even just a little, it is at peace.

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All-accepting repentance brings not only peace but also understanding and empathy. Here is an example: suppose as an adult, a person becomes aware of an area in their life where they keep going against the Precepts. Time and again they get caught in this and, although they really don’t want this to happen, it keeps happening. The person doesn’t understand this and feels more and more ashamed. How easy it is in this state to look down.

Fortunately, rather than just giving in to this downward-turned maelstrom, the person turns within and asks for help: “I see that this keeps happening, and I’m deeply sorry for it. But I don’t want to just believe and to base myself on a negative self-image. I so wish to do what is right, what does not create suffering. I haven’t found the way to do this in this area of my life though, and I don’t understand why. Please help me, please show me what is involved in all this!”

One day, almost unexpectedly, they come to understand that there is a connection between their difficulties in keeping a particular Precept, and the situation they were in as a child. They become aware that already as a child, they kept losing themselves in the same unhelpful way of acting, although it took a somewhat different form back then. They see that at the root of the behavior of the child was a desperate attempt to find consolation in life, when the child kept witnessing much suffering in their immediate surroundings and was deeply distressed by it.

The now adult realizes that their breaking the Precepts in this area has the same root, in that nowadays too, it tends to happen when they are distressed in seeing people close to them creating suffering for themselves and others. Through having realized this, the person’s resolve not to keep getting caught in this habitual pattern has now become stronger. The understanding of the underlying confusion has deepened, and the ability to work on it is strengthened. As the person is now more accepting of their own humanity, their view of others’ humanity is kinder too. The roots of our breakages of the precepts in the present do, of course, often go much further back than just to our childhood.

This example reminds me of something a dear fellow monk once said, along the lines that the suffering of the past is cleansed within the compassion of the present. For this cleansing to be able to happen, our unconditional “Yes” of the heart is needed, as the suffering is revealed to us, whatever may have happened in the past. When there is a recurring memory of something painful that I regret, I am reminded each time of how important it is to meet it with this “Yes”, and not reject it. This makes it possible to entrust that which is pained to the great compassion in the present.

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As our view is more and more imbued with what Buddha shows us through taking refuge, this view gradually permeates our way of living. Genuine concern for others deepens. The wish that they may find how to access the True Refuge within their own heart grows stronger, as well as the wish to do whatever we can to help – even if our efforts may not feel like much to us.

This movement of the heart underlies our offering of merit, and our wish that whatever good may result from our life and from our spiritual effort, may benefit others. Sometimes this offering of merit emerges on the most unexpected occasions. I would like to relate here what happened during a night I spent in hospital a few years ago, after a biopsy. On that occasion it was made clear to me in a poignant way, as so many times before and after, how drastically our perception of things is altered when we go to the Buddha and ask for help, rather than just believing our habitual self-concerned thoughts, and giving in to our fears.

In the hospital bed beside my own was a man who was obviously in great distress. He had a noble face and long white hair, was about my age and was very thin. When during the day the medical staff asked him where he was from, he was not able to answer. I had the feeling that he may have been homeless.

Then came the night. All night long he kept groaning in pain, and periodically beat himself strongly on his chest out of desperation. I am a very light sleeper, and because I knew that I would not sleep at all, gradually I got into a real state: “Just now when I so need a bit of sleep! Doesn’t this poor man belong in intensive care? Why didn’t the hospital staff put him there? If I have to spend more nights in hospital, first thing in the morning I will ask if I can move to another room!”

Despite the panic, I tried my best to turn within and asked what was needed from me in this situation. Gradually and to my own surprise, I was able to offer up my fear and panicky feelings. After a while, I found my heart and mind were following in stillness the loud noises the man was making, and almost merged with them, without resistance. It became a long night of meditation and offering merit.

Towards the morning, I perceived the man in the bed next to mine as a real Bodhisattva, a groaning Bodhisattva, who was showing me something so important: that we can indeed let go of our fears and self-concerned mental patterns, and how these then transform into devotion and selfless love. This love lies dormant in all of us under the surface, sometimes covered over only by an excessive self-concern which, in my observation, often has fear at its root. As I was lying there with an inner gasshō, there was now real gratitude towards this man, who I was perceiving so differently from before.

It is interesting to observe that – even while having selfless love and tenderness in one’s heart on such occasions – one does not feel like a ‘loving person’. If anything, what happens is that our normal view of being a person wholly separate from others starts to disintegrate a bit, at least at its edges. When the heart is in harmony with its True Refuge, it is at the same time in communion with all beings. We sometimes intuit how much we are indebted to all beings on such occasions. The wish to give of ourselves fully, in whatever way we can, then becomes more stable in us.

When Rev. Clementia came to pick me up from the hospital and drove me back to the protected environment of our small temple, there was almost a yearning in me to be back in that overheated hospital room, together with the man in distress. But mainly, in the following days there was deep gratitude for the many opportunities that life presents us with, to listen to and follow our True, Eternal Refuge, as it keeps calling us back to Itself by means of what comes to us in life.

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I hope that the above descriptions have made it clear that turning towards Buddha in our heart is a choice we keep having to make, right in the midst of our habitual mind-patterns and all the situations that life brings us. As we find more and more how to do this, a movement is set in motion and nurtured, that includes our taking refuge, repentance, our following what Buddha shows us, and offering the merit of our training to all beings. This most precious spiritual movement confirms, clarifies and deepens our true purpose in life.

Notes

1. 1. Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett. How to Grow a Lotus Blossom, (Mt Shasta,, CA: Shasta Abbey Press, 1993) p. 136.

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

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