“Touching the Earth, Seeing the Morning Star”
December 8, 2012
Teisho © Rafe Martin 2012
Enlightenment is the core of Zen. Gaining
some calm and experiencing peaceful sitting
is certainly also very good. No doubt about
it. Just look at the madness of our world.
People act as if crazed. And they are. Their
minds are without peace. But if peace were
all that Siddhartha was looking for, he
would never have needed to leave home. Or
he could have stopped off at any local forest
retreat and settled there. But those choices
didn’t work for him. They weren’t enough.
Having truly realized impermanence, the
insubstantiality of every person and every
thing, a fire was lit in his mind. He had to
keep going until he could touch real ground,
that is, realize, awaken to, his own nature,
“eternal, joyous, selfless, pure” as “the Kanzeon” says. To do that, we have to keep going. Or to quote one of my favorite books of
old tales, Irish Fairy Tales by James
Stephens, who wrote at the time of Yeats
and Joyce, “Still, if you keep on driving a
pig or a story they will get at last to where
you wish them to go, and the man who
keeps putting one foot in front of the other will leave his home behind, and will
come at last to the sea and the end of the world.” So the Buddha not just in that last
life, but through countless previous ones, kept going – as the jataka tales reveal.
Actually in the jatakas the Buddha is shown as having had some realization of essential nature, or own nature or, kensho as it is called in Zen, many times. That is, he
had intimately already seen into the living reality of selflessness, of wisdom and
compassion, into the identity of form and emptiness, relative and Absolute over the
course of many past lives. He’d already been, we might say, a Zen student, lay and
ordained many times, a Vajryana student, a hermit monk, a wandering sadhu, a
Theravadin, as well as having countless lives of basic ethical practice as human or
animal. Buddhist tradition says he always chose to go further, over the next hill, beyond the next river, through the next dark forest. And so can we. It is our human
nature expressing itself. Onward! Further! And even kensho, glimpsing reality, is
not the end, not where we settle down and say, “Ok! Now I’ve got it!” Many koans
point out the serious limitations, the very big mistake of such limited thinking.
Touching the ground is simply a beginning. It is like walking through a door, or
opening our eyes and saying, “Oh, here’s the ground. My goodness how simple! I get
it.” And then we can go on in our journey from there with that basic reality now the
foundation of the ever-changing landscape of cloud and sunlight, night and day,
summer and winter, ups and downs, highs and lows, easy and difficult of ordinary,
actually more-than-ever entirely ordinary, life.
Yet Zen reveres the Buddha’s enlightenment because it dramatically marks the path
of our own potential to realize ourselves and experience the non-dual, vast, empty of
ground of our ordinary daily reality. It is the hero or heroine’s quest. And it shows,
too, and importantly, the persistence, the effort, of preparing and being present to
everything that that underlies such culminating experiences. Roshi Kapleau used to
say, “There’s nothing you need to believe in Zen. No dogma. Except to have some
faith in the fact that when the Buddha exclaimed, ‘Wonder of wonders! All beings
are Buddha, fully endowed with wisdom and virtue,’ he wasn’t a liar or a fool. What
then did he mean? People seem anything but wise and virtuous. What did he mean?
That’s where our practice digs in. Anyone who has been practicing for years, crossing their legs, continuing at it even in the most desultory on-again, off-again way,
has faith in this un-nameable something, knows the same hunger and yearning that
drew prince Siddhartha from the safety of his sheltered home. Anyone who has been
coming regularly to sit anywhere, is being drawn by that something, a rising into
consciousness of Self-nature, which like a chick in an egg, a child in the womb is
turning toward the light of day and its own birth. Dokusan is for such people, those
who have been sitting and those who have begun and who are keeping at it in the
midst of life. It can be a way of touching base, for teacher and practioner to line up
and begin working together to help the journey find its own legs or wings, or just
simply, like a chick flopping raw and wet out of the egg, to unfold.
There are pointers to practice throughout the traditional narrative of the Buddha’s
awakening. Though the ex-Prince sat and sat, it wasn’t enough. There was a trigger
to his Aha! experience – oh, that bright morning star! Realization didn’t just come
from quietly looking within. He glanced up and suddenly – as if for the first time –
saw the morning star. That once distant bright star – the planet Venus actually
walked in and that’s when he realized, “Aha!” Then a morning star sat on eight
bundles of grass beneath the Tree and realized itself. And that was it. Gone gone entirely gone, as the famous Prajna Paramita Hridaya, Heart of Perfect Wisdom puts
it. No one seeing is real seeing. Just star!
Or as the great T’ang era Chinese Zen poet Li Po wrote:
The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
Here’s another point. The Buddha-to-Be didn’t just sit there quietly. He responded.
When Mara appeared and challenged him, he didn’t ignore it. When situations arise
in our lives we, too, can’t just sit till they’re gone. There is a time to act. It need not
be a big deal. It need not be dramatic. The Buddha just reached out and gently
touched the earth, and Mara’s whole world was overturned, overwhelmed, crushed.
He didn’t argue. It was a simple gesture but a non-dualistic one. There’s that little
lovely touch of myth, too. Kala Naga Raja the Black Snake King raises his ancient
hooded head and, “Lo!” linear time falls away. For a timeless instant, we are in the
inconceivability of timelessness. And that bowl forging upstream against the current
reminds us that we must go against the current, too, against the endless flow of
thoughts, concepts, ideas that form a veil between us and this breeze, this breath,
this whirr and clang of heating pipes, if we, too, would wake up. The Buddha’s
enlightenment story is part of the classical canon and is, at the same time, a demonstration of the living heart of our own practice.
For Buddhist tradition, Zen tradition, says that we all have the nature of Buddha,
have exactly the same vast, empty nature, full of creative potential and that from
the first, we are each fully and equally endowed with the same limitless wisdom and
compassion as a Shakyamuni. And because it is already who we are, if we practice, if
we make the effort then, we, too, can realize what is already there. Enlightenment is
simply being able to attest to it, not gain it. It can’t be gained because it has never
been lost. Zen’s point is quite clear. Roshi Kapleau’s point was clear. If we, too, are
this enlightened nature where is it right now? And why don’t we know it? Eventually we find that we begin boring into this with a whole heart and mind, like someone drilling deep for water. Not blindly. A sonar survey has shown that the water is
there, deep underground. We, too, have a map, not blind belief. Our Dharma Ancestors tell us that all the water we will ever need is already there flowing underground
beneath our feet. With this in mind we keep at it. We sit and sit, walk into dokusan,
listen to teisho, examine the precepts in our daily lives, follow the breath, count the
breath, return to the koan point.
Of course, for the Buddha, the ex-Prince, in this final touching-the-earth-moment,
the enlightenment he realized came after countless lifetimes of dedicated practice, of
steady drilling. His enlightenment was complete, every level of character and mind
fully realized. In substance every kensho, the small kind we’re likely to realize, and
the Buddha’s great enlightenment are the same. But in content they are vastly different. Buddhist mythos says that in this world age no one experienced more deeply
than Shakyamuni. With one touch he touched not only the ground but the bottomless bottom, and the soaring heights. It would be like comparing the finger painting
of a kindergartener with a work by Rembrandt or Picasso. The substance is the
same. Both are paintings. But the degree of conscious realization is vastly different.
The Buddha’s story, his home leaving and forest path exertions, his abandonment
by his ascetic disciples and his solitary facing of Mara — the primordial forces of his
– and our – innate ignorance – completes his long jataka path. Touching the ground
at last and seeing the morning star, he then gets up and walks on, transcending the
final temptation to just sit in complete enjoyment, complete freedom, complete realization, complete peace, and ease. Instead, he devotes his next fifty years of life to
walking the dusty roads, teaching those who while in reality, as complete and whole
as he, don’t yet know it.
So how did he know it? Like this – just prior to the moment of enlightenment, after
the Buddha-to-Be’s six years of exhaustive effort, (and endless kalpas of jataka practice-exertions), going the limit, trying and trying with all he had, drawing on the
power of all his previous efforts, his countless failures and triumphs, Mara the Buddhist Tempter, or Distracter – in short, the inner voice of ego – finally takes off all
his masks and nakedly appears. Mara is worried. He (or she’s or It’s) begun to see
that Siddhartha may actually escape from even the most subtle nets of self-centered
error and fully realize, that is awaken to the innate Buddhahood shared by us and
all beings. Desperate, Mara makes a last-ditch effort to turn the once sheltered, but
now deeply determined ex-prince from his goal. He pulls the ace in the hole – selfdoubt, the doubt we all carry: “What? I have this True Nature? It is me? And I can
realize it?”
This doubt makes us cling to belief in the solidity of a forever separate, winninglosing self. It is a root belief gluing us to what is only provisionally real. Mara confronts the Buddha-to-Be and asks, “How could you, a sheltered ex-prince, be worthy
of the Supreme Goal of complete and perfect enlightenment? Come on. Get real. Better men than you have aimed for this and failed. Better women, too. You’re young
and just a beginner to boot. Pride makes you think you can do this. Give yourself a
few more lifetimes to work at it. Then you might have a chance. You’ve got the basic
ability sure, but now? No way. Back off and take it slow.” It’s a reasonable request
and reasonable advice; reasonable as all get-out, an argument devilishly reasonable.
Take it easy. Be careful. Go slow and steady. Prepare yourself.
At this potentially crucial juncture, with worlds hanging in the balance, Siddhartha
doesn’t waste breath arguing with the habit voice of his own inner separateness, his
own predilection towards self-centeredness, or ego. He doesn’t even try to put together a reasonably winning answer. To enter the argument is to have already lost.
Ready? Not ready? A self that gains? A self that loses? A self that’s ready? A self
that’s not ready? He didn’t get pulled in to Mara’s challenge and metaphor. Instead,
probably seeing the joke, he simply smiled. Then he reached down and touched the
earth on which he was sitting, and let the earth be his witness and speak for him.
And what happened? The earth replied with thousands of voices, voices of rivers,
mountains, stones, animals, plants, trees, and people all speaking as if they were
one, thundering that there was not a single spot on the globe where, in some past
life, this seemingly young, sheltered ex-prince hadn’t already given himself totally,
in all-consuming efforts for the sake of perfectly, totally clear, no falling back
enlightenment and for the welfare of all suffering beings, sentient and non-sentient
alike.
Mara is shocked, overwhelmed, and thoroughly defeated. His last effort to tempt the
Buddha-to-Be to falter, to cling to the limited viewpoint of an isolated “me in here,
everything and everyone else out there” was crushed. The earth had spoken at a
touch, confirming worth beyond measure.
Touching the earth is touching the ground, the clay, the foundation of who and what
we are. Of dust we are made. Adam, first man, gets his name from adamah – Hebrew for “earth.” “Human” is from the latin humanus – “groundling.” Touching the
ground is touching the ground – of being. Of Being Us. “Sesshin” – the Japanese
term for a longer Zen retreat – means to “touch the mind,” the ground of our being.
We sit for days and get grounded. Which means touching our ordinary nature, ordinary mind. Acknowledging and accepting ourselves all the way down, including past
errors and efforts, we let our own jataka past, our own many births and lives –
which could simply mean those that have occurred in this lifetime, confirm us.
Childhood, youth, maturity, jobs, relationships, children, gains and losses – haven’t
these been our route to this present moment, this present person? Everything
changes. Yet something abides. What is that? Touch that ground is what Zen says.
The jataka tales are the record of the Buddha’s own unique practice history. It is a
particularly long history, said to go back eons, world ages, Big Bangs. But we, too,
according to classical Buddhist tradition, each have a jataka history of our own, built
of thoughts, deeds and events that testify to our nature. We can accept those that
reach back into our childhoods easily enough. Zen practice or any form of paying attention really, makes this clear. Things happened that made us who we are. We
stumbled, scratched our knees, literally and metaphorically, we banged our heads,
literally and metaphorically, got up, let the wound scab over, and tried again. Sometimes we triumphed. Sometimes we met sorrows.
But perhaps we can also accept that, as with the Buddha, our own history may also
extend back through ages. Where does the path of causation that unfolds as each
plant, bug, animal, bird, us, begin? Can anyone say? This need not be upheld as
some grand ideal, but simply as the root of who and what we are. Our interest in
music or literature or cooking or Zen – did it come from genes, ancestral experience
and predilections woven into our DNA, or from unknown past lives? From what
ground do they arise? Ordinary life, and ordinary mind are wonderfully mysterious
just as they are. I’m not saying we need to believe in past lives. Just that we be
aware and see that this very moment has its own lineage of causes and effects. As
Bodhidharma’s “One-Mind Precepts,” traditionally examined at the conclusion of
koan training puts it, “Self-Nature is inconceivably wondrous.” That is, our nature,
the very nature that’s sitting here right now hearing sounds, feeling sensations,
thinking thoughts is inconceivably wondrous.
As inconceivably wondrous as our nature is, it’s not an ideal we might, if we’re
lucky, one day attain. True-nature is who we are. Why else was the sky so blue when
we were children, and why the grass so green? The mysterious, empty ground of being has been our support throughout the endless past, as it is right now at this moment. The literal ground we walk on is full of microbes, germs, and bugs. Mindground is full of doubts, problems, fears, pride, worries, errors, and regrets. So we sit
again and again, follow or count the breath, examine a koan, make vows over and
over and work, day by day to uphold the precepts. For, while our True-Nature is, in
reality, always there, the ox of the mind likes to wander. Until it’s trained, it can be
a formidable beast, going where we’d rather it didn’t, running into thickets and forests, breaking down fences to tear up gardens. Neither the ground beneath us nor
Mind in which thoughts arise, are sanitized or safe. Do we really want them to testify for us? (As an aside, years ago I heard a story from my teacher, Danan Henry
Roshi, founder of the Zen Center of Denver. He was speaking about a French women
he’d met who had done the traditional three year, three month, three week, three
day retreat of committed Tibetan Buddhist practice. No mean feat. She emerged
successfully, open and aware, yet said, in a charming French accent, that she was
surprised to find that her mind was “still naughty.”)
When we were children we could stretch out fearlessly on this dirty, fertile ground.
We could roll on it, lie on it to gaze up at clouds, sky, and birds. We could pick up
dirt, rub it into our jeans and hands and hair and come home shining. When did we
become afraid to touch the earth? When did we start to think we were too good for
it, that it was not just our support, but “beneath us?” When we were young we explored our minds effortlessly, too, fearlessly experimenting with sounds, shapes, colors, movements, emotions, health, sickness, ideas, as well as internal narratives and
voices. When did we learn to fear our own nature?
At his moment of final challenge the Buddha touched the earth. He didn’t reach for
the sky and beg for help from something or someone above. He didn’t get sucked in
to Mara’s metaphor and try to win the debate and out-argue the Distracter. No. He
simply touched the always present, selfless ground and found what is “eternal, joyous, selfless, pure” as the “Kanzeon” proclaims. For the Earth Mother, the foundation of our own ordinary daily being, answered saying, “It’s not the first time. He’s
earned great worth by his own past efforts. It is the right time. This moment is the
culmination. So many, many selfless efforts have come before. I am the eternal witness to the endless chain of cause and effect. The time is now.”
What makes it such a truly lovely story is that it’s not ancient history. It’s our story,
too. This moment is itself part of the ongoing jataka series of the un-fully-realized
Buddhas we each are. Essential nature, the ground beneath us, is always here, life
after life, moment after moment, breath after breath, thought after thought. Past
lives inevitably lead to present ones, to this one in which we now sit, walk, stand,
speak, eat, work, worry, create, hear, cough, pick our noses. Come day’s end, we say
“good night,” and lie down with and on the ground of our nature, the ground we
practice from, have always been standing on, whether we knew it or not. We, too,
will touch base with it and let it speak for and confirm us. Our fundamental vow as
human beings, is to know ourselves. This is why we practice. It is the guarantee that
one day we will realize it. If like the Buddha, we keep at it. Roshi Kapleau used to
say the vow to become a Buddha is our nature, exactly like the vow the peach-pit
takes to become a peach. The Buddha’s touching the earth at the moment of enlightenment reminds us that we, too, have already entered the stream that inevitably
leads to Realization of the Way.
When we come to our mat in the zendo we bow to it. Then we turn and bow to the
community of fellow sitters. This is our acknowledgement of the mythos. This cushion is our spot beneath the Bodhi-tree. This spot we sit is the center of the universe.
It is where our Buddha work gets done. But, unlike the Buddha, who first opened
the gate, we don’t have to do it alone. We can sit with others. We have Sangha. This
is the gift, too, of the Buddha’s realization and springs from his post-enlightenment
teaching.
Zen Master Dogen famously wrote out the central realization of Zen practice in just
a few well-chosen words: “When the self advances and confirms the 10,000 things it
is called delusion. When the 10,000 things advance and confirm the self it is called
enlightenment.”
The ten thousand things are birds, bugs, clouds, mountains, rivers, people, animals,
traffic sounds, cell phones, raindrops, pebbles, clumps of earth, and shining morning
stars. Ordinary things confirm us, tell us who we are, everyday. In reality, there is
no barrier between us, and a single thing, not even as much as a single hair or speck
of dust. The morning star shines in. Raindrops fall in. Clouds drift in. The dog
barks. Woof! Woof! A child laughs. The heating pipes clang. That’s it. That’s all!
How wonderful. How blessed. Another word for enlightenment is intimacy. This is
not cleverness or serendipity. It is the actual nature of things. The very real etymological meaning of the word, “enlightenment” is just this – “intimacy.” Touching the
ground means we realize our intimacy with everyone and everything.
Case 20 of the Shoyoroku or Book of Serenity koan collection, much regarded by the
Soto school of Zen, goes like this:
Jizo asked Hogen, “What are you up to these days?”
Hogen said, “I am wandering at random.”
Jizo said, “What do you expect from wandering?”
Hogen said, “I don’t know”.
Jizo said, “Not knowing is most intimate.”
Hogen was suddenly enlightened.
Touching the earth is always possible, wonderful intimacy is always possible, because our ground, our own vast empty nature, is never, ever far away.
As to what that experience is like, let’s turn to our good friend of the West, William
Blake, for closing words.
To see a world in a grain of sand,
A heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
Eternity in an hour.
Whenever and wherever we touch this common ground, East or West, it is December
8th, the morning star shines, and we are home.
Or, how about this: “Sit on Mother Earth, like a child in a mother’s lap. We are
made from her, Mother Earth. No matter what tribe or nation, we are from the
earth and we will be coming part of her again.” ~Sam Benally, Navajo Elder