Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte , and#8220;Loving Samara,and#8221; is a talk specially recorded by Viveka Chan in San Francisco for the LBCand#8217;s Parinirvana Festival Day, 2012, entitled and#8216;He Who Was So Kindand#8217;.
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Loving Samsara
[music] Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you, and happy listening. I'd like to all of you in the LVC. This is Viveka here in San Francisco, and I'm just going to share my reflections for this occasion called "Loving Samsara." It's to start for more personal context. For years, one of the ways I felt closest to the Buddha is through the practice of his teachings on mindfulness of breathing and impermanence from Anapanasati, Suta, in the Pali Canon. This Suta records 16 instructions, and the last four explicitly teaches how to look at impermanence in a beneficial way. In the setup for the Suta, an assembly is gathered to experience the Buddha's presence and teaching. He announces that he has something important to teach, which alerts those present to pay attention. When I practice the Suta, I recollect the Buddha and this scene. I am a spiritual seeker in the presence of the Buddha. There is a palpable crackle in the air. We have an essentially similar setup on Paranavana Day in the scene of witnessing the teaching of how the Buddha died. Entering the Anapanasati scene further and practicing the instructions he gives in the Suta brings me even closer to the Buddha. His Dharma is immediate, blooming freshly right at the moment of putting it into practice. He is pointing at a path away to freedom that I can locate in the present moment, over 2,000 years after he first rolled out this teaching. By actually traveling the path, I become intimate with his enlightened heart mind itself, close with what he really is, which is not limited to a single person. Buddha is not just out there, but in here, Buddha is a name, a pointer to an all-pervasive freedom. For me, the 16 Anapanasati instructions are a very reliable sadhana for bringing the Buddhas enlightened qualities present. This quality of awakening mind, heart, the Buddha jewel can be manifested in this human being right here, right now. To the extent, the significance of what he exemplified and taught is realized. We realize that in degrees, in flashes, there is a recognizable Buddha flavor to those fruit moments on the path, when the practice ripens all along the way, even if we later falter. Meeting the Buddha in the Anapanasati Sutta is my inspiration for reflection with all of you, gathered at an assembly in the LBC for Parnavana Day with the theme. He who was so kind, marking the passing of the Buddha with a calm, steady, but joyful look at impermanence. So let's go into what the Buddha taught about looking at impermanence in the Anapanasati Sutta. In the Sutta, the Buddha simply advises that once an awareness of the full range of experience is touched into with the support of the breath that the meditator then includes focusing on impermanence. The focusing on impermanence comes out of a crucial beginning that in a sense is never abandoned in the process of awakening. The beginning is to be willing and able to experience everything as it is, however it unfolds while mindfully breathing. Experience body, feelings, emotions, mental states, the internal and the external, everything as it is, and as it arises, abides and dissolves through an infinitely open-ended shape-shifting display. The flux seen in the continuum of time can be recognized as impermanence. We see in practice our own and when others share their experience, how there is such a strong tendency to resist what's happening in the very practical nitty-gritty of sitting practice, not to mention our many hours off the meditation cushion each day. The sense of vulnerability is easily triggered in the face of the ungraspable immensity of what is happening all the time. We can't stop it or control it, not even just to catch our breath. The unfolding energy is ceaseless. In a California image, it's like being a new surfer floating on your board in an ocean that is heaving up really big waves. This is samsara, sink or surf. From a certain familiar point of view, this impermanence, or in Pali Aniccha, is grating an unwelcome, or duka, and personally threatening, on a top. The Buddha wanted us to surf, not sink. In the beginning of the Anapana-Sati-Sita, he urges us just to learn about, to register the conditions we find ourselves in. Simply mindful and sensitive to what's happening, breath by breath, being willing and able to experience what's happening. It's the beginning that continues into the middle and extends all the way through the practice. And the practice brings us to full awakening. With this basis and being aware of what's happening when trains oneself in the final four instructions of the Anapana-Sati-Sita, number thirteen, focusing on impermanence I breathe in, focusing on impermanence I breathe out. In this thirteenth instruction, facing how it is and how it is unfolding, experiencing and knowing, changing directly. Instruction fourteen, focusing on fading away of attachment I breathe in, focusing on fading away of attachment I breathe out. Here, let everything, all of it, let it run its course. Through the inherent flow and movement, more and more subtle habits of energy, holding things together, get opened up, and move with the natural, irrepressible momentum of the unending change. Instruction fifteen, focusing on cessation of fabricating me and mine I breathe in, focusing on cessation of fabricating me and mine I breathe out. With the release of patterned resistance, then what? A new kind of shapeshifting and experience, a qualitative shift, there's not a person to which it is all happening to or making it happen. It's not personal, just a lawful unfolding, harmonious, totally natural, taking care of itself. When the activity of making me and mine calms, something else becomes apparent, is dawning. That which cannot be fabricated, or even really named, but can be recognized. Instruction sixteen, focusing on relinquishment, total letting go, I breathe in, focusing on relinquishment, total letting go, I breathe out. Letting the natural and folding take its full course, letting the Buddha's teachings ripen, getting closer to the Buddha. Fully authentic expression, what one is? Noticing that there is an infinitely open, centerless, thunderously quiet and still expanse, that is simultaneous with the infinite display, form is only emptiness, emptiness only form. All the Buddha's intentions are fulfilled. This lawful unfurling, just roughly described, is traditionally called the Buddha's teaching, a petitya samat-pada, or conditionality. And Sankrajna has pointed out and brought this to life, this particular, unfurling, in the positive spiral, or positive nadana chain. Resisted, anicha, anata, and dukkha, shape up as samsara, or the repetitive trap of cyclic conditioning. Anapanasati shows a path of least resistance through which we learned fully allow for how things are. The exact same stuff that was shaping up as samsara, shapes up in a way that to the trained practitioner is recognizably what the Buddha intended. The spiral path, moving from dukkha, rather than grasping an attachment, to knowing and trusting, to joy, to emotional energy release, to calm, to bliss. To deep stability of mind, to knowledge and vision of things as they really are, to letting be, the imperturbability, to freedom, to knowing one is free. From there, the energy of this precious human birth can express an infinite form of skillful Buddha activity with no limiting set formula. A lawful spilling out of the Buddha's last four instructions in the Anapanasati sutta, in accordance with petitya samat-pada, is unleashed in the direction of the spiral path by focusing on impermanence. There is a saying in Tibetan Buddhism in the moment of recognizing or tasting the fruit of this trend in motion. All of the Buddha's wishes or intentions are fulfilled. This brings us to my ending reflections which relate to the title of this takkhet, Loving Samsara. Ananda described the Buddha's whole life at the Parinavana scene with the words "He who was so kind". Ananda was close to the Buddha. He traveled with him most of the time, and what stood out in the end was the Buddha's quality of well-wishing. This well-wishing later in Mahayana Buddhism became known as Bodhicitta, the heart of Buddha, or awakened heart. The kindness of the Buddha that Ananda knew can be immediately felt to those today consistently practicing the Dharma. One can joyfully experience the Buddha's intention that one become a Buddha, free, as free as possible. That is why he taught the Dharma. Earlier in the Anapanasati sutta, the Buddha points out an instruction to gladden the mind. It's one of the more overtly kind statements in the sutta. In case there has been any tooth-gritting, he says, "Hey, if you notice, you can take a moment to enjoy the fruit of the practice now, and it is sweet". For us to become a Buddha, we have to love Samsara too. Love it in the sense of appreciating unconditionally, whatever appears. Especially learning to include what we don't want, what triggers vulnerability and resistance, what we consider some sorrow. We can see through practice that what fuels Samsara is resisting it and grasping for something to fight it off. It's not really the stuff that comes up that is what makes Samsara. We make it in how we understand and relate to all the arising and dissolving. Samsara is given rise to when we try to leave behind or escape the contents of Samsara. It's unenlightened beings. It's messiness. The very same stuff, the very same people, when deeply allowed and appreciated or just what it is, how they are manifesting, reveals what we have been seeking all along. And then it's not really possible to say in words. We can get a feeling for it in that kind expression full of love and ease and calm of Buddha images. She who was so kind. We can sense it when our own being takes on that quality when we naturally express Buddha in our body and breath and energy. Love is a fruit of the practice as well as a cause. I'll just end by sharing one of my favorite Tibetan poems about how to be with the enlightened teacher with Buddha. Mingling my mind with his in the wisdom of Dharmakaya, naked reality, all the intentions of the Buddhas are perfectly fulfilled. This is a jeweled essence of my heart's pit instructions placed directly in your hand, like Buddha in the palm of your hand. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharmabite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freeBuddhas.io.com/donate. And thank you. [music fades out] [music fades out] [music fades out] [ Silence ]