Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Ritual, Metaphor and Poetryand#8221; is an excerpt from the talk and#8220;Standing on Emptiness: View, Meditation, and Actionand#8221; by Dhammadassin. This beautifully weighted talk challenges us to look at how we think and how we act, and is rooted in a moving fidelity to experience as the ground of our inspiration. One to be treasured!
Talk given at the Western Buddhist Order women’s national Order weekend, August 2004
[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. So the deeper truth is relational, and that brings me on to the last thing I wanted to talk about, the last way I wanted to approach for you, and that's ritual and metaphor. And I realise that I follow you by pursuing my sense of fascination about what is real, that essential emotional quality that makes you want to pursue something. As we've been saying, that's the same as faith. What fascinates me is what keeps me on the path, what gives direction and momentum to my practice. Shores the truths that I must follow. And it's essential this fascination, this quality of fascination, because as Banti says, "nothing that is thoroughly amenable to rational analysis will satisfy us for you." It's why wisdom is not just analytical awareness, but appreciative aesthetic understanding. So I find myself, unlike the ES's, I find myself fascinated by poetry, metaphor, ritual. Standing on emptiness is itself a metaphor. So standing in the view we see that there's a poem at the heart of the world. According to the view, reality has a nature, and we can perceive it. And it's the same reality for the mind and the heart. Faith in conditionality is deep conviction in the view. The heart's release is a total release, a release into totality, pointing to the boundlessness and unbroken upness of reality, like space it is without a break or crack. But it's also an unknowable totality, it's a mystery. It can't be approached very closely other than through poetry. Yet we can be happy in it. I was thinking with Milarepa, "happy is the mind, powerful and confident, steeped in the realm of totality." View means anything to me, it means that. That's how I'm going to be. "Happy is the mind, powerful and confident, steeped in the realm of totality." And also with a healthy body, I glorify the mandala of the whole. So, original read tells us that the secret truth is relational. And this is also the basis of ritual, because the essence of ritual is communication. Why do we need to communicate with other beings? Because communication is the exchange of energy and experience. And we need to continuously to be in a process of exchange with others. Other beings have things to give to us, and we have things to give to them. The only way that this occurs is through the give and take of communication. The pathways of this exchange are interconnectedness with other beings. And ritual opens these pathways and allows exchange and communication to the car. So, like ritual, metaphor makes connections which enrich. Suggests an openness of perception, a shift of perspective, at best a generous rejoicing quality. I think metaphor is important for you, because if you is seeing the relation of things, an imagination stepping beyond a particular view is our means of perceiving it. View is seeing consequences and seeing relations, not just with the corporeal eye, as the lake calls it, but with an eye for a connection to something deeper. So, we must use our imagination. It requires the vivid immediacy of samaton and the presence, the felt's connection of the kasuna. So, in the recognition of a connection, you give value and loving attention to something. You transfer qualities, you link, you connect, you see things in relation, and we open this. An example that came to my mind was from calendar girls. Do you remember that bit where they talk about the women of Yorkshire are like flones? Well, the women of Yorkshire are flones. So, that's the example that came to my mind. That's a metaphor. The women of Yorkshire are flones. And as you watch that movie and you listen to that poem, you know what they're all about. So, it's valuable because it resists the easy option of habitual responses and introductions. In one sense, it's a form of projection, metaphor and poetry. Literally, a thing made, a making up, a making of connections. But in another sense, as Sabotee once said to me, you don't make connections. You recognize them. And if, as in the dharma pata, as in the yoga cha, we constantly create a world, then why not create a positive one? So, thinking metaphorically, we begin to build ritual into the world. We begin to reveal the ritual in the world. Through ritual, ones led to take a larger view of one's life and one's world. So, metaphor, looking again, looking for connections, is the readmission of the familiar in a new way. Without dwelling in the safety of our habitual interpretations, but dwelling in the gap between simple sense consciousness, simple sense perceptions and the judgments we saw quickly link about things based on pre-existing labels. Put it in another way. If metaphor, we can re-enchant the word. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donnie and thank you. you you [BLANK_AUDIO]
