How Atonement Heals Us And Transforms Our Lives

In this talk, I explore what atonement means, and how we can use our "at-one-ment" as a transformative spiritual practice. Far from the self-flagellation that atonement connotes in many religious traditions, atonement means something very different in Buddhism.

Transcript

Tonight,

I'd like to talk about a chant that we chant every week in our Sutra service,

And that I often pass over now because it's so familiar.

It's the gatha of atonement.

But when I first started practicing Zen,

It was actually the chant that bothered me the most.

It rankled me the most.

I didn't like it.

It made me uncomfortable.

And of course,

Now,

As a Zen teacher,

I would say to my younger self,

Good,

That's good to be uncomfortable.

But then,

I thought,

This is one of those Zen things that makes me want to turn away.

So as you know,

We chant,

All evil karma ever created by me since of old,

On account of my beginningless greed,

Anger,

And ignorance,

Born of my body,

Mouth,

And thought,

Now I atone for it all.

I came from a background where,

In the Jewish tradition,

There's a whole day of atonement where you fast,

You confess your sins,

You talk about the fact that God might decide you're going to die in the next year because you may not have atoned for your sins.

It all seemed so gloomy and shaming.

And I would come away from a day of atonement often feeling worse about myself.

And I thought,

Well,

Is that what this is about?

Is Buddhism saying,

Okay,

You are filled with sin and you need to atone?

And I had these visions of medieval monks wearing hair shirts and flagellating themselves and mortifying the flesh.

So is that what we're chanting about?

When we say all evil karma ever created by me?

When we talk about my beginningless greed,

Anger,

And ignorance,

Those three poisons?

Well,

As with so many things,

Zen turns it on its head that rather than the familiar equation of sinning and atoning for one's sins,

Buddhism and Zen look at atonement quite literally,

Even the word atonement,

Which is at-one-ment,

And it emphasizes how it is in the nature of our being that karma arises from our greed,

From our anger,

From our ignorance,

That that's the truth of who we are.

And if you notice at the end of the chant,

It says,

Now I atone for it all.

What does that mean?

And again,

As in so many teachings in Zen,

It's quite literally what it means,

That by chanting this,

By turning toward the truth of what we do out of greed and anger and not knowing,

Ignoring,

That just by turning toward it,

We atone for it.

That we witness the truth of this part of being a human being.

And so what atonement is,

In our tradition,

Is simply turning toward and bearing witness.

Yes,

I do this.

Yes,

I act at times out of anger.

I break those precepts,

Those bodhisattva precepts of not killing,

Not stealing,

Not lying.

I do this because it's impossible not to do this as a human being.

And bearing witness is the essence of what is healing.

Our tradition doesn't have a concept of sin.

The Buddha taught not about sin,

But about what was skillful and what was not skillful.

What was skillful was what worked to create harmony in a community.

What worked to relieve suffering rather than create more suffering.

And so,

When we look at behavior that makes us cringe,

When I look at that burst of anger,

Or I look at that selfish act where I hold back from giving to someone where I could,

That it's really about what is skillful and what's not skillful.

And so,

What we talk about is not whether we are evil beings,

But whether the actions that we do create harmony,

Relieve suffering,

Or cause more suffering.

So,

We have to kill in order to live,

And our job is simply to bear witness to killing.

We often steal,

Or in the Buddhist terminology,

We often take what isn't freely given.

Just by having more than someone else,

We are taking for ourselves what someone else has not given to us.

And these things will never be entirely eradicated.

None of us can ever avoid saying things that are untrue at times.

If only to spare someone else's feelings.

And so,

The task is to bear witness to all that we do,

And that that bearing witness is in itself the Atonement.

We bear witness to life as it is.

Joko Beck,

Who we had a reading from at the beginning of the evening,

Joko Beck called life the only true teacher.

And so,

Rather than trying to transform ourselves into some kind of mythical being that is never angry,

That is always wise,

That is never greedy,

Our job is to bear witness,

And in bearing witness,

Understanding how we might be more skillful going forward.

It's easy to imagine that we want to transform ourselves into beings who are always kind.

Who are never greedy.

Who are never selfish.

But,

Bear imagine,

Has likened this to wanting to breed tigers who are vegetarians.

That the nature of the tiger is,

Includes aggression,

And it includes killing.

The nature of being a human being includes,

At times,

Breaking those bodhisattva precepts,

And never completely being able to fulfill those bodhisattva vows of saving all beings,

And ending all delusions.

And so,

Rather than trying to transform ourselves into mythical beings that exist nowhere,

Except perhaps in the bodhisattva ideal,

That instead of doing that,

We bear witness again and again.

We bear witness when I say something that isn't true.

When I take something thoughtlessly and don't realize that someone else may be deprived because of my action.

When I'm impatient and I make a remark that stings someone else.

We watch,

And just by watching,

We transform our action.

We transform the karma we've created.

So,

Rather than doing penance,

Rather than whipping ourselves,

What practice asks us to do is to turn toward,

And be really interested,

In the moments when we screw up.

In the moments when we do the thing that we,

Oh,

So wish we hadn't done.

When we say the petty,

Snarky thing that we wish we hadn't said.

Practice asks us to turn toward it.

To be really interested in it.

Interested in what happened.

In why it was not skillful.

Why this didn't work well.

Or why it did.

And the precepts,

Rather than asking us to be perfect,

Of course,

Ask us simply to notice when we're able to live according to those moral guidelines.

And when we don't,

We bear witness to all of it.

Because greed and anger and ignorance are just one part of the truth of our lives.

And they can be the greatest teachers that we have.

And so we turn toward even the things that we dislike.

Old age,

Sickness,

Death.

My anger.

My unhappiness.

And we turn toward it as a way to transform it simply by watching.

Because,

As Joan Tollefson has said so wisely,

Awareness is its own action.

Awareness is transformative.

And so,

That is bearing witness to the life of the 10,

000 things that includes what we wish we would do differently.

And then,

Of course,

There is the other side of things that is not really another side,

Which is the world of emptiness,

Of oneness.

Where there is really nothing to change,

Nothing to attain.

And these actions are simply a part of the great whole of the universe.

And from that perspective,

We are not a self-improvement project.

We are not trying to make ourselves different.

And yet,

As Suzuki Roshi famously said,

You are perfect as you are.

That's the emptiness side.

And you could use a little improvement.

That's the world of form of the 10,

000 things.

So,

Atonement,

In that literal meaning,

Says,

At one,

One with all of it.

And that's what practice asks us to do.

Rather than sinking into shame or turning away when we disappoint ourselves,

To be present for that disappointment,

For exactly where we feel it in the body.

And then turn toward all the causes and conditions that arise that push us toward actions that are not skillful.

And that bearing witness is all we need to do.

And this is what Ajahn Brahm was talking about in the reading that I began with tonight.

Where he said,

If you're on the wrong track right now,

Just be patient and still.

You won't stay there for long.

Instead of trying to discipline your mind with ill will and fault-finding and guilt and punishment and fear,

Use something far more powerful.

The beautiful kindness,

Gentleness,

And forgiveness of making peace with life.

And I want to go back for a moment to what we read from Diane Rossetto as she talked about what this transformation actually is,

How it happens,

And how it happens outside of our awareness.

She says,

The transformation that we aspire to is similar to the stone in the river.

The stone doesn't know that it's getting worn smooth,

That its shape and contour are changing.

It has no idea.

It just keeps accepting the river.

That river is our lives.

That we have no idea how our observing our skillful and unskillful actions shape us,

Take off some of the rough edges,

Smooth us out.

It happens without our knowing.

It happens imperceptibly.

And it is at the heart of what's transformative in this practice.

And so,

Let's keep chanting the gatha of atonement.

Let's keep looking toward an atoning for it all.

Reviews

My only regret right now is that you don’t post more. No, that’s not right, I also regret that I don’t live in Cambridge so that I could attend your teachings in person. No, really I have so many regrets. And I need this marination in atonement. It is so freeing, especially now in these times that are just so obviously fraught. Of course, all times are fraught, just like these. Thank you from the bottom of my afflicted heart, mind, and town.