Finding The Light Within The Darkness

In this talk, I explore the dark times that all of us face in our lives, whether personal or communal, and how there is a way to meet the darkness and find light within it. Now more than ever, we need ways to practice with fear and anger, so that the effects are healing and not harming.

Transcript

Tonight,

We are just beyond the darkest day of the year,

The winter solstice.

And here in the Northern Hemisphere,

In Boston,

It's cold and it's dark.

And it comes around every year.

And every tradition has a holiday that celebrates the light.

And all up and down my street,

I see beautiful Christmas lights dispelling the darkness.

And it's pretty wonderful.

And Buddhism has its own celebration that we call Rohatsu.

And it's a celebration of the Buddha's enlightenment.

It's normally held on December 8th.

And I used to think it was a celebration that had to do with light.

Enlightenment contains the word light.

And it's all about lighting things up and reminding us that there's light in the world.

Not a bad thing to do.

But any of us who've been sad or depressed or lonely or angry during the holidays know that there's only so much that holiday cheer and holiday light can do to bring us out of our funk.

And I've come to understand that Rohatsu,

The celebration of the Buddha's enlightenment,

Is not about stringing lights up and singing happy songs.

It's actually about a man who went through hell.

And we're celebrating it.

So many of you know that the Buddha left his privileged home and wandered for many years and sought out spiritual teachers in many different disciplines and did not find anything to alleviate his deep pain and his deep questions about what the meaning of suffering was in this world.

And then at one point he sat down under the Bodhi tree and as legend goes,

He said,

I am not getting up until I finally understand this great matter of life and death and suffering.

And there were no Christmas lights.

There were no happy songs.

The Buddha was visited by every torment that his mind could muster.

Sadness,

Rage,

Sexual longing,

Boredom.

All the avenues of suffering were right there.

Plaguing the Buddha.

He sat down and his mind did what all of us have experienced,

Which is that his mind went wild.

Mara,

The demon of this story,

Afflicted the Buddha with everything that Mara could throw at him.

Everything negative.

And the Buddha just sat through it all.

Just sat.

And as the morning star rose,

The Buddha experienced awakening.

And his first words were either,

I am awake or I,

Together with all beings,

Have awakened.

And he woke up to what we discover when we sit,

When we keep sitting through all the things that our minds throw at us.

He discovered the truth that much of what we see as demons dissolves with time.

That most of it passes,

Comes and goes.

And that most of it is of far less consequence than it seems at first.

And so,

What we see with Rohatsu is that we're celebrating the Buddha's descent into his own inner darkness.

And his waking up.

Because of that darkness.

That the darkness was actually a vehicle for his waking up.

This is not what we sign up for when we come to Zen practice.

We sign up for relaxation.

We sign up for something we call enlightenment,

But it's definitely going to be blissful.

We're sure of it.

We don't sign up for monkey mind.

For the hell realms that the Buddha experienced.

And yet,

The Buddha's story and many of our stories have shown us that it is the suffering,

It is the hell realms that are our most important,

Most powerful teachers.

It's the darkness.

There's a wonderful koan in the Gateless Gate collection.

About Daishan,

Who became a very revered Zen master.

But it's a koan,

A story about a time when he was a very new student.

And he had the privilege of sitting with his teacher,

Lungtan,

Through the night.

And the story goes that Daishan,

The student,

Questioned his teacher very sincerely far into the night.

And it got pretty late and Lungtan said,

Why don't you retire?

Basically,

Time for bed.

And so Daishan bowed to his teacher and turned and lifted the blinds to walk out.

But he was met by darkness.

And he turned back to his teacher and said,

It's dark outside.

So his teacher lit a paper candle and handed it to Daishan.

And Daishan was about to take it when the teacher blew out the candle and plunged them both into darkness.

And at that point,

Daishan had sudden awakening.

Now,

That's an iconic story where it happens suddenly,

His eyes are opened and he's forever enlightened.

Happily ever after.

But the image is very poignant.

Where this young student,

Who's so happy to be able to ask his teacher anything he wants,

And they stay up late into the night and then as he turns to leave he says,

It's dark out there.

And what the teacher shows him is that nobody can light someone else's way.

That we make our way through the darkness,

All of us.

But the teacher is right there with him.

He's not alone.

Daishan was on a search for awakening and in fact,

He had become a scholar of lots of Buddhist sutras and eventually he gave up and burned all of his notes.

He was so hungry for a way to understand this life and death.

Just as the Buddha was.

It's an image of searching in the darkness.

And it's pictured as a journey.

In many traditions,

The hero or the heroine takes a journey.

But when did Shakyamuni achieve his enlightenment?

When he sat still.

When he didn't move.

When he stopped wandering around.

And I found a wonderful poem about this.

From a poet named Judith Collin.

I've not seen anything else by her,

But I love this poem,

So I'm going to share it with you.

It's called The Lay Person's Lament.

And she writes,

Shame on you,

Shakyamuni Buddha,

For setting the precedent of leaving home.

He left his wife and his child to go searching.

Did you think it was not there?

In your wife's lovely face?

Or your baby's laughter?

Did you think you had to go elsewhere to find it?

Shame on you.

I am here to show you,

Dear sir,

That you needn't step even one sixteenth of an inch away.

Stay here,

Elbows dripping with soapy water.

Stay here,

Spit up all over your chest.

Stay here,

Steam rising in lazy curls from cream of wheat.

Poor Shakyamuni Buddha,

Sitting under the Bodhi tree miles away from home,

Venus shone all the while.

I love this poem,

Because it reflects our certainty that awakening has to be something we're going to find by going somewhere,

By doing something,

Besides being right here,

Sitting still.

But of course,

What happens in this wonderful bait-and-switch practice of ours is that when we finally give up trying to get something,

When we finally give up trying to get somewhere,

There is awakening.

There are moments of seeing things as they are,

Of seeing ourselves as we are,

As part of everything.

As Dogan reminds us,

We don't practice to reach enlightenment.

Practice is enlightenment.

And we are all Buddhas.

Of course,

We insist to ourselves,

No,

It can't be that.

It can't be right where we are.

It has to be someplace else.

And so,

What we keep reminding each other of,

Because it's so hard to believe,

Is that all we need to do is be here in each moment to see the world open up.

As one of our readings goes,

Just look and look,

And suddenly you'll laugh out loud.

Or the song of Zazen,

Which we read tonight,

Puts it this way,

How boundless and free is the sky of samadhi,

How bright the full moon of wisdom.

Truly,

Is anything missing now?

Even in this dark,

Cold winter solstice,

Is anything missing now?

Nirvana is right here before our eyes.

This very place is the lotus land,

This very body,

My body,

Your body,

The Buddha.

Thank you.