Saige
Saige’s Silent Place
Danan’s Clearly Practicing Signlessness and Flavorlessness
Laura’s Sangha Talk
Who entered this room this morning? Am I my story of who I am? Has the story accompanied me to this room, and is it sitting here, in my seat? Who am I without a story? Would I even be here?
It has occurred to me that this is my burning question, and I do mean burning in all the associations my mind can conjure: burning as in too hot to touch, unless one has the proper tools. Burning as in consuming fuel which results in heat and/or light. Burning as intense, urgent.’ This is the burning question of life and death, and how I am willing and able to be present, or not.
How does the story of our lives, our biography, show up as we encounter the dharma wherever/however we are? Is it an identity I crave, the looping of unrepeatable pleasant memories, the self-defeating judgments I cling to? Hopes and desires that I imagine I cannot live without, and everything I do not want to welcome, and instead, refuse. My small ‘self’ imagines an infinite yardstick that is constantly measuring my life. Oops, one step forward and again, I have fallen short. But what if I can take the microscopic view of belief in this ‘self,’ and turn it around completely, so that what I experience is from another perspective. Suddenly my seeing changes. Accord with reality allows my point of view to expand to the point where clinging to self becomes too painful, a balloon full of hot air that must explode and release, disintegrating to transform. I may notice that the wonder of living is far more marvelous and terrifying than even my docudrama of small self. Suddenly, and repeatedly, the personal story I tell burns more easily away, consumed as enlightening fuel. My conventional biography may remain as a scaffold or relic of a life lived but not proof of taking its so-called ‘substance’ as reality. Reality appears to me (is me) where my aliveness and curiosity meet the insubstantial, constantly changing world.
That is inconceivable, and I notice that that is the point. I did not know, beyond a shadow of entirely reasonable doubt, who or what or how I would encounter this morning, and you. Inviting this as possibility, I may yet be surprised, and once again, the beautifully made shroud of my ‘self’ slips from my shoulders. I may be exposed, but what or where is there to hide from living dharma? Is my face red with shame? Is this alarming, or too simple, or irreverent, or boring?
It is burning.
I forget all the time as I study dharma/life every day, every moment, even in the forgetting. But blessed suffering helps me notice the choiceless choice that is always present, to step back, resting in a moment: life as buddha nature, complete and needing nothing. Why choiceless? The wisdom of no escape.
Why meet you here? Because this is Cloud Zendo sangha, a place (which is no place) to intimately encounter each other. That is the never-failing help we acknowledge and vow. Even when I might speculate “Are we meeting? Will Tayler be able to bring the temple? Who has a cold? Is anyone going to give a dharma talk? Another koan?” The challenge presents itself each time we gather: the opportunity to sit with each other as witness, in curiosity, in tender-hearted openness to all that is.
I assert that each of our biographies (which are provisional by nature), including all circumstances, errors, joys, doubts, failures, and faith have brought us to this moment, right here, right now. My biography exists simply to keep me honest. With you, with the world and all beings living and dying in biographies mostly unspoken but revealed, in the seasons of nature and human accomplishment and ignorance, the movement of all waters and air, time spread across mountains, earth, and sky. By hearing, contemplating, and meditating together, we study Dharma in its all-inclusive freshness.
Meet me here, same (not same) place, same (not same) time, and same (not same) you. May we greet each other as if for the first time, for that is how it is. What about you?