Author: Payton Swick

Drawing on the work of poet, naturalist, translator David Hinton, Sam guided our reflections on the role of the body as a key stage for the first Noble Truth (dukkha), and for the fourth Noble Truth, the Path to liberation, as well.

In addition to Hinton’s translations from the great Daoist Chuang Tzu, Sam shared excerpts from several dharma talks that bear on the subject of embodiment.

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/player/69732.html

Mindfulness Directed to the Body; Greg Scharf,  2/29/2016

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/player/26004.html

Embodiment of Insight; Christina Feldman,  11/10/2014

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/player/47554.html

Towards Embodiment; Christina Feldman, 9/27/2017

I read from:

“Hunger Mountain” by David Hinton, (2012),  (Chapter titled “Unborn”) p.110:

[Chuang Tzu] describes a little band of crazy sages who are celebrating their friend’s death as a return to his true form.   They have mastered the unborn, and he describes them as “cultivating __,” that originary dance of Absence, as “wandering the one ch’i that breathes through all heaven and earth.”   Then he continues:

    “On loan from everything else, they’ll soon be entrusted back to the one body.   Forgetting liver and gallbladder, abandoning ears and eyes — they’ll continue on again, tumbling and twirling through a blur of endings and beginnings.  They roam at ease beyond the tawdry dust of this world, wander without themselves, boundless and free through the selfless unfolding of things.”

Another version, from “The complete works of Chuang Tzu” translated by Burton Watson (1968).   Ch. 6., p. 86ff.

After some time had passed without event,  Master Sang-hu died.   He had not yet been buried when Confucius, hearing of his death, sent Tzu-kung to assist at the funeral.   When Tzu-kung arrived, he found one of the dead man’s friends weaving frames for silkworms, while the other strummed a lute.   Joining their voices they sang this song:

Ah, Sang hu!

Ah, Sang hu!

You have gone back to your true form

While we remain as men, O!

Tzu-kung hastened forward and said,  “May I be so bold as to ask what sort of ceremony this is — singing in the very presence of the corpse?”

  The two men looked at each other and laughed.  “What does this man know of the meaning of ceremony?” they said.  

  Tzu-kung returned and reported to Confucius what had happened.  “What sort of men are they anyway?” he asked.  “they pay no attention to proper behavior, disregard their personal appearance and, without so much as changing the expression on their faces, sing in the very presence of the corpse!  I can think of no name for them !  What sort of men are they?”

  “Such men as they,” said Confucius, “wander beyond the realm; men like me wander within it.  Beyond and within can never meet.   It was stupid of me to send you to offer condolences.   even now they have joined with the Creator as men to wander in the single breath of heaven and earth.   They look upon life as a swelling tumor, a protruding wen, and upon death as the draining of a sore or the bursting of a boil.   To men such as these, how could there be any question of putting life first or death last?   They borrow the forms of different creatures and house them in the same body.  They forget liver and gall, cast aside ears and eyes, turning and revolving, ending and beginning again, unaware of where they start or finish.  Idly they roam beyond the dust and dirt;  they wander free and easy in the service of inaction.   Why should they fret and fuss about the ceremonies of the vulgar world and make a display for the ears and eyes of the common herd?”

And another version,  from “The Wisdom of China and India” Lin Yutang, ed. (1942).   p. 663.

These men,” replied Confucius, “play about beyond the material things;  I play about within them.  Consequently, our paths do not meet, and I was stupid to have sent you to mourn.   They consider themselves as companions of the Creator, and play about within the One Spirit of the universe.   They look upon life as a huge goiter or excrescence, and upon death as the breaking of a tumor.  How could such people be concerned about the coming of life and death or their sequence?  They borrow their forms from the different elements, and take temporary abode in the common forms, unconscious of their internal organs and oblivious of their senses of hearing and vision.   They go through life backwards and forwards as in a circle and without beginning or end,  strolling forgetfully beyond the dust and dirt of mortality, and playing about with the affairs of inaction.   How should such men bustle about the conventionalities of this world, for the people to look at?”

I read, from part of the Rohitassa Sutta (Anguttara Nikaya 4:45), a quote of the Buddha:

The end of the world can never
Be reached by walking. However,
Without having reached the world’s end
There is no release from suffering.

I declare that it is in this fathom—
long carcass, with its perceptions
and thoughts, that there is the world, the
origin of the world, the cessation of the
world, and the path leading to the cessation of the world.

A big part of the Buddhist teachings concerning suffering is the discovery that real life has pain, discomfort, sadness, and other events that we cannot avoid. The other part is the discovery that suffering coming from our relation to these events is often larger than the experience itself. But it seems so natural to fear and hate that discomfort. How are we to live wisely? This week, Payton examined the fundamental topic of suffering using a talk by Gil Fronsdal.

You can listen to the talk here: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/18230

This Sunday Ron guided our reflections, launching our discussion from a talk by Jack Kornfield, who offers us the invitation to change the perspective in which we view the phases of our lives, and the ways we discover and re-shape meaning as time unfolds.

As he so often does, Jack reframes our approaches to our own goals, plans, and aspirations in the larger rhythms of generational history, bodhisattva inclinations, and even planetary epochs, somehow making the vast into something intimate and relatable.

You can listen to Jack’s talk here:

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/69147/

While the past couple weeks we’ve discussed the elevated ideas about the nature of self, it is important to remember the importance of turning our concepts into intuitive wisdom.  To borrow a phrase from the yogic tradition:  lifting energy combined with groundedness leads to spaciousness.

Dharma Teacher Michelle Macdonald explores this shifting balance in an insightful talk, excerpts from which will be the prompt for our discussion this coming Sunday.  

She begins boldly: when we open our hearts, we open to everything.   And we don’t get to decide what comes in.  This can be painful, and our aversion to that pain leads to dukkha.  

So we practice.  We practice wisdom and compassion.  We keep coming back to the present moment, anchoring to what is safe when we need stability, and, feeling stable, we can then explore, arriving at an embodied, grounded, present moment practice.

You can listen to the talk here: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/33249/

At last week’s Sangha, we reflected on the notion of non-self in Buddhist thinking. This Sunday Margaret guided our continued exploration of this teaching, drawing on talks by Joseph Goldstein and Christina Feldman. We reflected on ways that recognizing the fabricated and shifting nature of what we think of as the self can lead us out of dukkha.

Here are the talks Margaret took excerpts from:

Joseph Goldstein:

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/48731/

Christina Feldman:

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/49244/

In the excerpt played from Joseph Goldstein’s talk, he refers to instructions to be given the next day on how to practice with seeing that consciousness is not self.  Here is the talk to which he is referring:  https://dharmaseed.org/talks/48725/

The older we become, the more past selves we leave behind. The process of “becoming” is endless; we are different people in different contexts but also at different times. What happens to those other beings? Do they cease to exist when we become someone new, or do they remain stacked deep underground in the caverns of our minds, waiting for the right moment to come back to life?

This week, Payton explored the theme of identity in Buddhist thought and the way that who we think we are changes day by day, moment by moment. And more importantly, where those selves might live now.

Payton began by reading an excerpt from the abstract of a paper for the British Journal for the History of Philosophy by Andrea Sangiacomo, a faculty member of the University of Groningen,

The discourses are concerned with how existence is used to support and consolidate a certain attitude of ownership, appropriation, and entitlement over contents of experience, in virtue of which one can claim that this or that is ‘mine’. The problem with this move is that it seems to require a degree of stability that is at odds with the fundamental uncertainty (anicca) of all conditioned realities. Existence is used to somehow cover up uncertainty, and thus allow for a semblance of genuine ownership and possession, while in fact possession and ownership are just deluded views doomed to be contradicted by the structural uncertainty of actual experience.

We then listened to excerpts from two talks on the topic of “becoming”,

Jose Reissig, To Study the Self: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/12713/

Gregory Kramer, Bhava, Becoming: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/25379/

Also mentioned during our discussion was the author David Hinton.

Steve guided our reflections this Sunday. Here is what he has to say:

The Buddha dharma is rich with lists. The Four Noble Truths. The Five Skandhas. The Five Remembrances. The Noble Eightfold Path.
Long lists. Short lists. One list after another and lists within lists within lists.

Last week Sam encouraged us to consider the Five Remembrances:

• 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. …
• I am of the nature to die. …
• All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. …
• My actions are my only true belongings.

This week I would like to share a short but deep teaching from Thay on the Noble Eightfold Path:

• Right View
• Right Resolve (Thought), 
• Right Speech
• Right Action
• Right Livelihood
• Right Effort
• Right Mindfulness
• Right Concentration.

Thay’s teaching picks up on some of the ideas we were discussing last week; in particular, the Fifth Remembrance.

But all these lists speak to the most profound insight, that of the Heart Sutra, the Insight that Brings us to the Other Shore, the Insight that Destroys All Lists: The Five Skandhas are empty.

You’ve traveled up ten thousand steps in search of the Dharma.
So many long days in the archives, copying, copying.
The gravity of the Tang and the profundity of the Sung
make heavy baggage.
Here! I’ve picked you a bunch of wildflowers.
Their meaning is the same
but they’re much easier to carry.

Hsu Yun – https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/Y/YunHsu/index.html

We then heard part of this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pC23kc4bq8U

In a recent sangha conversation, one of the Buddha’s starkest reflections came up. After the three familiar reminders of the universality of sickness, old age and death, he adds:

“Everything I love and hold dear, I will be separated from.”  

Then the sequence closes with this final reflection:

“I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions: Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.”

There is considerable food for investigation here, and Ellen, who guided our explorations this Sunday, offered a guided meditation drawn from a talk by dharma teacher James Baraz.

You can listen to the talk here:

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/player/71092.html

A core teaching,  briefly touched upon by Christina Feldman a few weeks ago, is how the self arises (and passes away) moment by moment and how understanding this leads to liberating insight.  With Sam’s guidance, this week we continued on this theme, with excerpts of dharma talks by Christina Feldman and Joseph Goldstein. 

Links to the talks are as follows:
Christina Feldman’s talk: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/43791

Joseph Goldstein’s talk: https://dharmaseed.org/talks/48725

Sam also read this excerpt from the Tempest:

https://youtu.be/KFNTAsC8qQ0 Tempest excerpt by David Threlfall

What does it mean to say that renunciation lies at the core of Buddhist practice in the quality of our relationship to living experience? How are peace, happiness and fulfillment to be found through renunciation, letting go, or non-grasping? This Sunday, Jane presented a talk given by Orin Jay Sofer at a month-long retreat held at Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Center in March of 2019.

You can listen to the talk here:

https://dharmaseed.org/talks/55422/