Jisho Perry, Rev. Master

Transcription of a talk given at Shasta Abbey in 2018.

I saw a ‘flash bomb’ performance of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy … It starts with a blind cellist standing out in front of a European Cathedral and a young girl, about 8 years old, coming up with her recorder and playing the first part of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. The blind cellist adds to it. And then, within a couple of minutes, an entire orchestra and chorus have assembled, and they’re all playing and singing the Ode to Joy. And it’s really beautiful, but it was a set up. It was all arranged in advance but appeared to be spontaneous. And I think the Surangama Scripture¹ I’m going to be talking about today is also a kind of setup.

The Buddha could not have spoken all of that … all of the entire book, 460 some odd pages, in one afternoon … One of the quotes I’ll be quoting today is the Buddha saying: “All words are false.” What I’m trying to do is to tell you however, that the source of our delusion (which is also false) is also the source of our salvation or liberation. This is a major part of what the Surangama Sutra is talking about.

I was invited to go to Europe next summer to give some little talks on this, and so was looking at it while on retreat at the Hermitage recently. It was then I realized just how much I did not know. So now, I’d like to give you a little introduction to the Suragama Sutra.

It begins with Ananda, the Buddha’s chaplain and the only one of his disciples who had memorized everything … all of the scriptures (which seems quite outrageous that anyone could actually do that). Anyway, Ananda was invited over to someone’s house for a meal and the next day while on his way back to the monastery, he was invited to another house where there was a very beautiful young courtesan who was chanting some sort of mantra to try to seduce him. And he was getting very interested indeed. The Buddha, with his wisdom eye was able to see that this was going on, so he asks Manjusri to learn the Surangama Litany and go to where Ananda and this young courtesan were sitting together on the bed. The Surangama Litany was strong enough to break the spell that she had been spinning. By the time they all get back to the monastery, the young woman has already become a bhikkuni. Now that was fast! By the end of the scripture, she has become an Arahant. And Ananda still has another 20 years to go after the Buddha’s death … She’s one quick learner!

So, in the first chapter of the Sutra, the Buddha asks Ananda, “Where is the mind?” And Ananda is thinking about the intellectual mind, and physical space, but the Buddha is talking about the Buddha Mind. And as Reverend Master Chushin defined the Buddha mind in a poem that he wrote, “That which fills and contains all things … there is no place where the Buddha Mind does not exist”.

The next chapter in the sutra is about awareness, because awareness is what doesn’t die and isn’t born. Awareness is the Buddha Nature. We all come fully equipped with the Buddha Nature. One of the teachings of the scriptures is that we don’t have to get something, we have to let go of something in order to understand what the Buddha is saying. We have to let go of our delusion and our delusion is the delusion of the self. The heart of the scripture is trying to explain to Ananda how to convert that ignorance into understanding.

One of the delusions our society sells us is that we are basically inadequate. We need more money, a better partner, newer cars, a computer that never has any problems … that we have to have something else. Baso³ said that we have to look through the eyes of the Buddha and not consider whether the self is adequate or inadequate. And that is what the Suragama Sutra is primarily about. It’s explaining that we already have the Buddha nature, we have everything we need …we are fully equipped. We’re so fully equipped that we actually believe the self is real. The self is actually the source of our delusions! And letting go the self of that self is no easy task.

But Ananda is able to ask a really good question and he gets a really good answer. I’m quoting here and I might make a couple of editorial changes as I go along. So this is Ananda asking the Buddha:

“I only hope that the Greatly Compassionate one will be moved to deeply pity us who are drowning in the sea of suffering. The sea of our afflictions. How the knots of our bodies and minds are tied and where do we begin to untie them so that we and the suffering beings of the future may be freed from the cycle of death and rebirth and fall no longer into the three realms of conditioned existence.”²

Having spoken that, he bowed to the ground, as did all the others in the assembly. He shed tears as he eagerly awaited the sublime instructions given by the Buddha, the World Honored One. We need to appreciate the depth of sincerity of his question here, and his willingness to break into tears trying to get the answer to it … how do I untie these knots? Then the World Honored One took pity on Ananda and all the others of the future:

“And all in the assembly who needed instructions, wishing that, for the sake of the future, they might transcend the conditioned world and become guides for the time yet to come. As he circled his hand above the crown of Ananda’s head, his hand shone with the light that was the color of the purple tinted gold of the Jambu river. Then throughout all the ten directions, every world in which Buddha’s were dwelling, shaped in six ways, each one of the numberless Buddha’s of those worlds admitted resplendent light from the crown of his head. Those beams of light shone down upon the crown of the Buddha’s head as he was seated in the grove. No one in the assembly had ever witnessed such an event.

Then Ananda and all the others in the great assembly, heard the numberless Buddhas throughout the universe speak in one voice, although with different tongues saying:

“Well done Ananda. You want to understand the ignorance that you were born with, the source of that knot. What causes you to be bound to that cycle of death and rebirth is your six faculties of perception and nothing more. Also, since you wish to understand the Supreme Enlightenment, you should understand that it is through those very same six faculties that you can quickly gain bliss, liberation and stillness, wondrous and everlasting”.

Although Ananda heard these words of the Dharma, he did not understand them. He bowed his head and said respectfully to the Buddha, “How can it be that nothing more than the six faculties bind us to the cycle of death and rebirth, while at the same time, they can cause us to gain wondrous and everlasting bliss?”

The Buddha said to Ananda, “The faculties and their objects come from the same source. What binds and what unbinds are one and the same. The consciousnesses are, by their nature, illusory, like flowers seen in the sky. In response to objects, Ananda, there is perception and in response to the facilities there are objects. Neither the objects nor perceptions of them have an essential nature. They are all dependent on each other like intertwining weeds. Know therefore, that the establishment of perceived objects such that they exist separately from our awareness is the foundation of our ignorance.”

So that is what I’m trying to explain today. And the explanation is quite simply that we see things through the eyes of the filter of self. So we don’t see things as they truly are, we see things as we twist them through our likes and dislikes, “my” fears “my” greed, angers, all of “my” karmic conditioning is what distorts that perception; the perception itself is the Buddha nature. That awareness is what doesn’t die. It isn’t born. We all have it. But we twist it because we see it through our old habits. Neither the objects nor perception of them have an essential nature. Everything that exists is falling apart and being reborn again. All these things. They are all the Buddha nature in that they don’t have anything that is real. If you think of It as emptiness, Reverend Master Jiyu used to say, It’s the fullest emptiness you’ll ever know. It’s the emptiness of pure awareness. Know therefore that the establishment of perceived objects such that they exist separately, within our awareness, is the foundation of ignorance. What we are saying here is that by looking through the filter of self, you create a self and you create an ‘other’. And that duality is the basis of our delusion of a self. It’s how we see things. When objects are not perceived as separate from awareness, that itself is nirvana, which is the true purity, free of outflows. Why would you allow anything else to be added to it?

Well … because we come with old karma. What I want to talk about is the conversion of that karma by understanding ourselves. I guess Socrates was absolutely right in terms of Buddha’s practice when he said we have to know ourselves. We have to see when “ourselves” are getting in the way. We see that because we experience suffering. Suffering has purpose. It’s there to show us where we don’t know something. That’s our ignorance. And when we see things through this filter of self … Reverend Master Daizui used to talk about it in terms of having very dark sunglasses, layers of them. And so the way in which we perceive things does not allow for the recognition that it is actually our perception of things that is distorted.

I tried to turn on a light switch yesterday and the 14 lights I was trying to turn on didn’t work. I guess I had the wrong light switch. But maybe it wasn’t the light switch, maybe it was the person turning on the lights. And that is exactly what we have to look at. What are my habits? If we can sit still in the midst of not knowing something and allow that feeling to go through us without either repressing it or indulging in it, then we have a good chance of cleaning up the karma by simply allowing it to pass through. Because we are just karmic washing machines. Just try to work through those feelings of frustration. I tried to make a Skype call yesterday and I couldn’t get my Skype program to work. I ended up just talking on the telephone. I couldn’t get it to work this morning either. But the point is that the last time I worked on it, I wasn’t bothered by it. If it doesn’t work, even if it never works, it’s not a problem. In fact it would probably be a great joy! But we have computers … and learning patience is how this work of conversion is accomplished. It is what Thich Nhat Hanh says about patience; it’s “opening of the heart in the midst of things that are difficult.”

So when you have a strong emotional reaction to something, instead of just acting out of impulse, if you can, open your heart to that and see what it is that you need to do to change yourself to find out how to make the situation work. And very often, you can’t make the situation work. There are some situations that just aren’t going to work. And that’s okay because you can’t fix everything. But you can open your heart to the greed, anger, frustration and fear. You can see, for example, when you look at something really nice – really nice food – your greed arises, but do you have to take more than you really need? So when we look at something like smoking, it’s an addiction. But because it’s a habit, we don’t see how not to do it. Alcoholism, or whatever the addiction is, drugs, whatever, it’s our willingness to be still in the midst of having a strong desire or aversion to something. And just take a good look at that. Explore it. See where ‘self’ is there. Because only when we can see it with the eyes of compassion can we do something about it. But we have to understand that the nature of this delusion is the self … and it is weak … and we’re the only ones who can change it. The Buddha insisted that he wasn’t a savior because he cannot do that work for anyone else. All of us have to do this for ourselves. And we have to do it because we’re compassionate, we have to treat ourselves with kindness. We have to realize that, oh dear, if I act out of impatience or fear, I just create more suffering for myself. It’s that stepping back for a moment in the midst of those illusions, of that delusion itself, when we can realize that those really strong emotions are really not us! They are just habits. And being able to separate ourselves from this sense of separation of person and object.

The way Dōgen explains it is in terms of the Precepts, he says: “Within these Precepts dwell the Buddhas enfolding all things within our unparalleled wisdom. There is no subject or object for any who dwell herein. All things….earth, wooden bricks, stone, become Buddhas.”⁴ And that is how you see things through the eyes of the Buddha. If you are looking through the eyes of the Buddha you see the Buddha nature in everything. You see that in the cat and the dog.

I was greatly encouraged to find out that the Inuit people of far north, also in Greenland, don’t have separate words for ‘he’ and ‘she’ in their language. And they don’t have a separate word for animals and people. This conditions how they think about things. And if you realize that you’re conditioned to think in terms of ‘he’ and ‘she’ – you are conditioned to think about animals and people – then you create this separation. We have to see how our language, how our culture, how our personal karma that we inherit all have this innate subject/object duality; and we have to see that when we act on that, we’re acting on delusion, we’re creating more suffering. But we have to see that we actually do act on that. And we also have to see that we make judgments and judgments prevent us from understanding what it is that we are actually looking at. Because the judgment is ‘bad’ for us … For instance “I don’t like this or that person” or whatever. Then there simply isn’t anything more to learn. So we have to see when we are judging, we have to see when we are angry, we have to see when we are fearful.

I don’t think of myself as somebody who worries very much, but I was out at the Hermitage and suddenly began to worry about things. And I thought, oh, that’s interesting, I can just jump in and start worrying about stuff if I want to. Well, I don’t want to do that. If we can see ourselves going to those places, where we are acting out of habit, where we’re acting out of judgment, where we’re acting out of fear; when you can see that and say, no, I don’t want to go there, then you can help yourself. You’re getting to the source of the delusion. But you have to see it in a gentle, kind way. You have to see it with compassion. You also have to take yourself not too seriously. Because acting on this delusion of self is really stupid! And the stupidity isn’t because we are stupid, it’s because we don’t understand what it is we are doing at the time. And when we look more closely at ourselves, we see we are doing these things that are simply ridiculous. And when we can laugh at ourselves a little, we don’t take that ridiculous stuff quite so seriously. And that is really important.

But we also have to understand the scriptures. Even if we don’t understand it all in one afternoon – this entire book – it doesn’t mean that there isn’t something helpful to learn from It.

So this is the Buddha, continuing: “In our true nature, all conditioned things are seen as empty. That which arises from conditions is illusory. That which is unconditioned is not born, nor does it perish. It too has no reality, like flowers in the sky.”

One of the earlier chapters in the sutra is about visual awareness and the Buddha started out the day having his meal with King Prasenajit. That is where he was when he saw that Ananda was in trouble. The king’s question to the Buddha was that there were other teachers who teach that there is nothing after death. So the Buddha asks the king, “When you first saw the river Ganges, how old were you?” He says, “Three years old, I knew it was the river Ganges.” Well, when did you see it next?” “When I was thirteen.” Buddha asked, “Did it change?” “No, it’s still the same.” “Did you change?” “I was very different. Now I’m 62”. The river still looks the same. The awareness of the river is the same thing. But the king is getting old and wrinkled. The Buddha was trying to tell him that that which doesn’t change is the Eternal. That which does change is karmically conditioned stuff.

Though we use words to try to speak the truth, all words are false. In other words, you can’t explain the Buddha Nature in words. You have to experience the truth for yourself. Not only words that aim at truth but also false words – they are all false! All that is called true and all that is called false, is false! How can there be, therefore, the observer and what is observed? The perceiver and the perceived … there is nothing that is real. They are like vines that only stand by twisting around each other. Entanglement and liberation share a common basis. The path of sages and of common folk is one path only. And everyone has to do this for his or her self.

You should consider now; these vines that twist around each other, they have no existence and they do not lack existence. The darkness of confusion is our basic ignorance. The light of understanding brings about liberation. A knot must be untied according to a certain sequence. And when the six have been untied, the one will vanish too. So choose one perceiving faculty and realize your break through. Enter the current. Realize true enlightenment!

“From subtle agama is the storehouse consciousness.⁵ The energy of habits can burst forth into a torrent, lest you confuse the true and what’s untrue. I rarely speak of this, but when your mind grasps hold of your own mind, that’s not illusion. Then it becomes illusory, and if you don’t grasp hold of what is called illusion and what’s not… illusion too will not arise. How could what is illusion be established?”

The story given for this is of Yajnadatta, who looked in the mirror and didn’t see his head; he thought he lost his head!⁶ He went running around the town screaming that he had lost his head. Well, there was nobody that could put the head back. It was still there. That’s the nature of our delusion in that we think in ways that create this self and other separation. And we need to change how it is we perceive things by doing our meditation, by keeping the Precepts, by seeing how it is that we create our own suffering.

“This dharma may be called the wondrous lotus flower. The royal, indestructible, magnificent awakening. This practice of Samadhi, though likened to illusion can quickly bring you past the ones who need no further training. The peerless dharma is the road that all Buddhas, the world honored ones, use to reach the gateway to Nirvana.”

What he is talking about here is choosing one of the senses and going inwards. At this point, Ananda still thinks that Buddha is going to zap him with a hidden transmission and he doesn’t have to do the work of changing himself. Buddha realizes this and so he has twenty five Arhats and Bodhisattvas describe their understanding. And everyone has a different way of getting there. The last one is Avalokitesvara who speaks in terms of turning the sound inwards and listening to silence, which is essentially what our meditation is. And going into that … and to keep going deeper, into it, and to come to as full an understanding as the Buddha. Well, maybe just a little bit less. What we have to realize is that our meditation and our commitment to the Precepts and our willingness to look kindly at ourselves and other beings has that effect.

Somebody was noting that there has been some progress made with some of the juniors and Reverend Master Meian said, yes, training works. And it does work, but we have to do the work. We have to learn to sit still and see when we are experiencing suffering and realize that we have created this out of a misunderstanding. And if we open our hearts to that misunderstanding, there may be room for us to understand a little bit more deeply. But this is an ongoing process, it may take a couple of lifetimes. I’m currently reading the Jataka tales, and there are over 500 of them! So we don’t have to expect all of this to go away soon and, time doesn’t matter.

It matters that we make the effort on a day to day basis, to get out of bed and do the best we can for that day. Even when we are trying to explain something and not doing it skilfully, and I speak for myself, because these things are very difficult both to understand and also to live by. The more we can be patient with ourselves and our meditation, the more we can open our hearts to whatever reality we are dealing with.

Especially with getting older. I don’t walk as well as I used to walk…I stumble around, I don’t remember as well as I thought I remembered. What I thought I remembered is just an illusion, a story that I told myself. What we have to do is to take our reality and realize that we don’t have to have it any other way. We can just have this reality now today, and that is, in fact, the Buddha realm. You know, sometimes the weather is good and sometimes the weather is not so good. Sometimes I remember my car keys or I empty my pockets properly and put the stuff back in and sometimes I don’t.

Having some kind of sense of honesty that we have this opportunity as human beings to know the same things that Buddha knows. And that our vows to keep the Precepts and our vows to practice meditation is what eventually will lead us to deep understanding. But those vows transcend birth and death and the practice transcends birth and death. And the deeper we go into the seeing where we are keeping the Precepts and seeing where we are not keeping the Precepts, the more the heart opens. Just because we are opening ourselves up to whatever the reality is.

There is a lovely poem written by Mary Oliver in a whole book on dogs that I was just given the other day.⁷ There is a great one about a junkyard dog who wasn’t even lucky enough to be born on an old car seat. He was born on the dirt. But when he could open his eyes, he saw there were grass and trees, and in the night, he looks up …and he’s got these worms gnawing at him, but he looks up and sees one star, not a whole bunch of stars, but just one star. And he falls in love with this star. It’s a lovely poem; it says: “When you’re just there, and you’re loving yourself and you’re loving something, that’s where you’re at.” And you can be a junkyard dog seeing only one star, but loving it. Loving your situation, whatever you happen to be in and saying you don’t need something more than that. You can deal with computer problems or the car that doesn’t start or the flat tire on the freeway. Whatever those things are.

I was sent recently, a picture of a man in Somalia; his four year old son had just died of cholera. He was homeless. He was living in a makeshift tent. But somebody had gotten him some fresh water. He was sitting there with both his grief and his fresh water and his makeshift tent … and he was okay. Suffering does exist … and we have it pretty good here, when it actually comes down to it. We are not refugees and we are not waiting for somebody to provide us with some clean water so our kids don’t die of cholera. And at the same time, this is what human existence is like; some people are in very, very difficult situations. Anything we can do to help these people, please do it. But realize that you can’t solve all the problems of suffering. But you can do something about yourself and that is right here, right now. Today is your opportunity to do that. And when you get an opportunity to help someone please do it.

Because the kindness that we have to give and our concern for the suffering of others is enormously helpful.

Notes

1. 1. The Sūrangama Sutra. Trans Lu K’uan Yű (Delhi: B I Publications, 1966).
2. The Sūrangama Sutra. [as above] p.115.
3. 3. Baso, Dōitsu (Ma-tsu Tao-i) 709-788. Source of quote unknown.
4. 4. Zen Master Dōgen. Shushogi: What is Truly Meant by Training and Enlightenmen in Zen is Eternal Life by Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett, (Mt. Shasta, CA: Shasta abbey Press, 1999) pp. 94 – 103.
5. ‘Agama’ literally means ‘sacred work’ or scripture and refers to early Buddhist texts, and possibly practices mentioned in those scriptures. Storehouse consciousness (alaya-vijnana) is like a repository of the mind that stores things outside of our conscious awareness as impressions, or ‘seeds’ which can manifest in awareness as mental formations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agama(Hinduism)
6. 6. The Surangama Sutra. [as above] 98.
7. 7. Oliver, May. Dog Songs (London: Penguin Press, 2013).

the Surangama Scripture¹ I’m going to be talking about today is also a kind of setup.

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