The Great Meaningless Meaning

What makes a vow a Great Vow? Are there any great vows? Are there any meaningless ones?

The Founder of the Five Mountain Zen Order and, fortunately for me, one of my first teachers, the late Ven. Wonji Dharma, told a story of studying kung-an with Zen Master Seung Sahn. During a session, ZMSS responded to one his questions by shouting “You don’t understand! You have no choice.” Asked for an elaboration, the Master said that everything is already determined and that is why he had no choice.

Ven. Wonji Dharma, thinking in terms of Western ideas like determinism, Christian concepts of an omniscient being who already knows everything we will ever do, expressed shock and outrage. Zen Master Seung Sahn told him that it was only when he understood that he had no choice that his he would realize that there is a choice:
Everything has no meaning, no reason, and no choice, and we have our practice to help us understand our true self. Then, we can change no meaning to Great Meaning, which means Great Love. We can change no reason to Great Reason, which means Great Compassion. Finally, we can change no choice to Great Choice, which means Great Vow and Bodhisattva Way.

The Ven. Wonji Dharma did not describe his eventual understanding of this teaching, though he said he did use that quote as a sort of haiku, and he studied it until understanding did come.

Is this a description of the “Enlightened” mind a case of laying it all down in a state of unknowing, of without judgment taking up every single thing until you realize they are all, as in a Seung Sahn poem, One Pure and Clear Thing?

“Understanding is not mystical nor permanent. Like a vow, giving insight the space to fail miserably, but to return again and again to a grounding in one’s insight or vow. Neither True Understanding nor a vow will never protect you from pain nor from your own occasional stupidity. One never escapes the bloody mud of life, especially that which is in our own guts.”

“I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape having ill health.

I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.”

(The Five Remembrances, from the Upajjhatthana Sutta)

This idea of only being able to rely on one’s actions, one’s vow, runs like a red thread through the Numbered lists of the Vinaya, through the Paramitas and Four Immeasurables, etc., until it rests most emphatically in the 200 + bhikṣu & bhikṣuṇī Vows.

 The meat of the Bodhisattva may find it impossible to remember all these vows: by choosing the skillful, compassionate response in the service or all beings, one can nevertheless embody them in the most crucial way. The daily, minute by minute awareness that leads to those moments in which we see without eyes, beyond words, in which we are just one with the space in which we find ourselves remains the practice no matter how many experiences we have of what some call Enlightenment.

We have no choice to live in the stew of life; the Great Choice involves sitting with a serving within that uncertainty and chaos, that awe and curiosity, all that absurd beautiful, inspiring life we all share in our altogether short visits on this planet.

I take Zen Master Seung Sahn’s teaching to mean that truly, deeply, deeply, the Bodhisattva has no choice. The “How may I help you?” focus of our Seon tradition points to moments of action, of and understanding of what needs to be done, beyond personal choices or beliefs. There is no choice because the situation, relationship, and function of the moment of helping are all one; the Great Choice is the only choice because the personal safety of choice, belief, sense of self, is not in the mix. Is there any good reason for taking on something as absurd as the Bodhisattva Vow? But when you do, that lack of reason become the Great Reason and, should you persist in its practice, you realize that there is no choice, that no choice has become the Great Choice.

This is one of the enigmatic and faintly outrageous vows in the Precepts for ordination:

“Vow to make great vows.”

Master Seung Sahn’s admonishment to the Ven. Wonji Dharma suggests a gate within which we can skillfully work with that one.

So, we Vow to make great vows.

There is no reason. There is no choice.

25 Practice Reminders (after Seon Master Gyeongheo)

Look out!

Don't take yourself too seriously.

Don't be afraid.

Common sense is holy.

Laugh your ass off.

Loved the unloved, and their loving hearts.

Sit down and stay awhile.

Here they come!

Stop talking to yourself about yourself.

Trust your experiences.

Do the important things first, then work.

Do not teach until skillful.

One person at a time.

Laugh your ass off. (yes, again: Humor is holy.)

Create what can be said, written, drawn, etc., in a single breath.

Make sure you are where you say you are. out!

Don't take yourself too seriously.

Don't be afraid.

Common sense is holy.

Laugh your ass off.

Loved the unloved, and their loving hearts.

Sit down and stay awhile.

Here they come!

Stop talking to yourself about yourself.

Trust your experiences.

Do the important things first, then work.

Do not teach until skillful.

One person at a time.

Laugh your ass off. (yes, again: Humor is holy.)

Create what can be said, written, drawn, etc., in a single breath.

Make sure you are where you say you are.

Stay a beginner; there are a lot of people still at the starting line who need you.

Sorry: your opinions and ideas are not important; your actions are.

You are here to keep going, and then go.

Look to the center, to the margins, to corners, for the obvious and the ignored.

Relax: you will miss out on most of what you want to see, read, and own.

There is nothing to do; so what will you do?

Do the best you can with what is in front of you right now.

Die once.

Do what you said you’d do.

The Beautiful Flux of The World

Or, Notes on the House I Was Supposed to Die In

My mother’s cherished azalea bush was actually a rhododendron. The trees that hugged three sides of the house, “keeping it cool”, were in fact shrubs that had never been trimmed, had been allowed to extend absurdly, like a rabid soccer announcer who elongated the word “goal” beyond any beneficial descriptive or transcendent purpose. Both misnamed but loved flora would have to be cut down before my parent’s house could be sold.

Home still feels like a place to return to, not to own. For the past ten years, I could only afford to live in a one or two room studio, functional only for sleeping, storing my collections: books and records, and the canned and dry food I would buy but never have the energy to cook. So, home could always remain the home I grew up in, where my father died, where my mother, recovering from a stroke with defiance and solitude, slowly let fall into disrepair. That home had to also function as a place I would eventually own, through a Will, since I never felt like I would be able to afford one of my own. It was as a safety net in times of concern over just how unable I would be to afford shelter. It needed to be there in case I failed.

 My father died in the upstairs bedroom, which he had filled with his sleeping presence 22 hours a day toward the end. Did he enjoy that feeling of weightlessness supposedly common to schizophrenics? My old room, with no door, was across from his. It had long been a storage space for the books and records I couldn’t take with me to my one room places. I would visit, and rummage through my collection, wondering if I would ever have room to assemble it proper, listening to him breathe a few feet away.

The house was sold, for a sum that twice what it was worth, thanks to its purchase by a developer; it would never have passed inspections. With that my wife and I, along with my mother, were able to put down enough money to be able to afford a house that, even after living felt surreal to me in its size and accessories. We had a deck, a pool table, a small bar, a home office. Many of the things I would allow myself to dream about when I was feeling materialistic, I now had. I’d felt like I’d won something, not earned it. But I had earned it.

Eleven years later we slowly, painfully lost it, our life savings, retirement accounts, etc. My no longer being able to work and the numbing process of qualifying for disability ate up the dream. A miracle of a friend offered use of an open rental property, where we stayed until we slowly began to get back on our feet. When we moved out of there, I felt a loss too; I hadn’t earned that space, but I did receive a rare gift. We try to hold on to those too, even when it is obvious its time has passed.

I think now about my sense of place because I’ve learned that we have no choice but to come and go. Change robs and renews in ways far beyond that of housing. I am responsible for accepting that, and also for maintenance, for knowing how to maintain., those changes. We don’t earn our changes so much as face the choice of accepting or rejecting our lives as they present themselves. Some of those changes are unnerving, frightening, but not all the time. My wife and I learned new things, saw friends, laughed our asses off, even in the darkest times.

As a kid I was always comforted by snow during winter; I thought it protected me though it had no power to protect at all; it could only just announce or amplify danger in any approaching strange footsteps. But it could also create anxiety, false danger, in those eerie crunching sounds of movement. What felt like security to me carried the very seeds of what I feared. Attachment is normal, and comforting, in other words, but is its own kryptonite.

Like the way we try and reconstruct history through pottery shards, bones and signs of ritual, we also leave clues behind as to who we might have been, who we thought we were, as well as who we ended up being. That just IS. The beauty of the world is impermanent, because you will die and take the world (of your senses) with it. The world is permanent, as endless lives are being born every day that create the world anew. We are large enough to hold loss and Gratitude in the same handful of snow.

Remember, Ananda, There is no Farewell

Ananda, likely unaware of it, is an archetype that shows up in several religions: the faithful, but weak follower of the One, who shares a bond with him no other disciple does, but one who nevertheless struggles not only with that bond, but with completely surrendering to the enlightenment he desperately seeks. Ananda, in other words, is us, that “human, all-too-human” spiritual worrier.

His time spent in old age during the last days of the life of the Buddha are moving, fearful, frustrating, compassionate, and ultimately heroic. While that process is not an ideal one for attaining enlightenment, it is none the less one very familiar to a lot of seekers. Although hope is no substitute for direct action, Ananda’s story in those late days do give hope to practitioners like me, who certainly have been lost and confused in the past, and are still more than capable of misunderstanding what is right in front of us.

The need of courage to fully realize what we seek is one of the more poignant spiritual paradoxes. That the Buddha teaches that we already own what we seek—and therefore there is really nothing to seek for—is cold comfort, until it begins to make sense.

In the Dhammapada, in Verse 152, the Buddha refers to old age mostly as a time of regret for those who have not in their youth developed some spiritual mettle. He says:

Just as the ox grows old
so this man of little learning:
his fleshiness increases,
his wisdom doesn’t grow.

To make such a detailed note of the time Ananda and the Buddha spend together in the latter’s final days in some ways completes the Buddha’s views of old age that began with his first walk outside of his family’s influence. It reminds us that while old age may be a time of decay, diminishment and maybe regret, it is also, like any other time, a moment for enlightenment. Every moment is THE moment of change. That Ananda gave passionately to the Sangha despite his fears, is also a lesson for us. We can still help, still be useful, even if we have not fully “gotten it.”