For a PDF version of this talk, please click here: Feb 18-19 2022 - Nehan-e.pdf
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So we are all here right now because of everyone and everything that came before: without exception. You are alive right now, not only because of your parents and their parents, but ancestors stretching back to the great chemical bog that began all of life—and everything before that—to whatever was the source of it all.
And you're even here because no one, not a thing, not a creature, not a moment got in the way of whatever led to us being here. We could say we're here because it just all worked out. So part of our celebration today is to remember that.
We also remember the people closer at hand, closer in our lives. Those we love. Some who have apparently left this world—and I say apparently for a reason I'll explain in a second.
Of course they're not here now. We miss them. We love them. But our Buddhist way also says that things are not only the one way they appear. And while it is true that some have come and some have gone, there is something that never comes and never goes: because it never leaves, never was, anything but here. This is what we taste in our zazen.
You know I like the example of the ocean. I could use a garden or a forest. I could use many things to express this. But I like the ocean. We're waves that rise up for a time, cross a bit of distance, then eventually fade. The other people we love, the people all around us, everyone who came before: also waves. They came, they went. We can see ourselves as the sea: the sea has been, and will be, and is right now. And that is all the waves have ever been. The waving waters. The sea itself.
We Buddhists don't like to think of a thing, so I like to say it's more like a process. A great dance that's going on. A happening. Something's happening. That was our expression from last week: Something great is happening. And you are this happening and I am this happening and it's all happening. Everyone we loved was this happening.
And to the extent that this happening is still happening: they haven't gone anywhere. And yet, we miss them. It's hard to see that this happening that's happening is still them. But it is.
Sometimes they were difficult people in the past. We like to think that difficult people are victims, so we offer metta for them. Deep down they were suffering, that's why they did those things. So we take this opportunity to offer, as best we can, because it's so hard sometimes and some scars run deep... to offer some forgiveness.
And sometimes maybe we were responsible for someone's death. We could not avoid it. We made a choice, or there was an accident. I know someone who caused a car accident one time, someone died, and they carried that weight all of their life. We offer this chance to remember those times and say, "I wish It had not been so. I'm sorry."
We think that those who were born will come back again in some sense. You know, the waves fade but then the ocean rises again. Those waves are also the ocean. You are the ocean, they are the ocean, I am the ocean, it is the ocean. So those future lives are also what we are.
Today we sit remembering. Remembering saying thank you: to our parents, our siblings who may have left this world, wives and husbands, children. Some of them did not live long enough. But there's something about this ocean that's also beyond measure. It's not a matter of long or short. Short things are short, long times are long. And yet the ocean flows on. Let us remember them all: friends, even the little animals in our lives, all of it, all of them.
It's all happening: that's the happening. Let's remember when they happened—but know they're still happening. They're happening right now in our hearts. They're happening and everything in this world: the breeze, the sun rising in the morning, the cloud in the sky, is all their happening. Our happening. It's happening. And all this happening is expressed in our zazen.
Let's sit.
——
Gassho,
Koushi
STLaH
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