Tricycle | Awake in the World

I’ve been told—but I don’t know for sure—that you’re like me. If I could speak for you, I would say that you have a deep longing for oneness, a deep urge to return to your original face before your parents were born.

The sutra just quoted talks about “the mountains and rivers of the immediate present.” How can you return to the immediate present? These mountains of the immediate present are the self before the emergence of subtle signs. Your existence in the immediate present is the self before the emergence of signs.

When we try to chant “The Merging of Difference and Oneness” during morning service, sometimes there are great differences in the pitch of our voices. When we feel the painful difference, we yearn for oneness. Some of us, in trying to make the oneness happen, just make more difference. It’s so discouraging to try to make difference turn into oneness: you can’t do it. Difference is difference and oneness is oneness. But in the mountains and rivers of the immediate present, difference and oneness are merged.

Anything we dream of is something we want to be reunited with. Everything we see, we hear, and we touch is what we want to be reunited with. Everything we experience we are separated from. Turning around, stepping back: this is practice. Once we step back, we naturally step forward. But before we step back, we don’t know what to do. We’re not settled, we’re not satisfied. When we step back from the world, we step back from where we are, and if we have any reservations at all about where we are, we cannot step back. When you and I are willing to be right here, right now, wholeheartedly, we can step back. We can turn around.

I’m expressing an aching heart. My heart is like water trying to return to the ocean. If I can simply accept this, it’s enough. “What does this pain ask of me?” “What does this person ask of me?” “What does this bird ask of me?” An answer may come. The answer may be “Turn it around.” Or “Let go.” Or “Come home.” Or “Scratch my back.” You may get an answer; that’s okay. But don’t stop questioning. “What does this ask of me?” is simply a way to talk about unambivalent presence. It’s a construction to help you let go of constructions. But it is not really a way back: you’re already there.

You may think I’m explaining something to you, but I’m just expressing myself. Hearts are meant to bleed: that’s what they’re built for.

There are about eighty people in this sesshin (retreat), and we are all packed into one room, so, unfortunately, some of the seats are not so good. Some of the people who got bad seats were moved to other bad seats. They are currently in some new bad seats, due to the compassion of the practice leaders. Our bleeding hearts sense your difficulty and we want to make you more comfortable. We don’t mean to inflict pain on you by putting you behind posts two inches from the wall, next to people you don’t like. We don’t mean to. But in our own stupid way we may be being very kind to you, giving you a chance to practice grateful mind. You are in a situation, a painful situation, where things are quite different from what you expected. Many people are experiencing emotional pain—almost stronger than the physical pain they are experiencing in their legs—regarding their seating assignment. One older student actually almost ran out of the zendo because of her seating assignment. Just as she tried to flee, the supernatural powers of the practice leaders moved her to a different seat. She’s sitting very still now in her good seat. Some other people didn’t get their seats changed, and they were even luckier, because their terrible situation turned around. How did they do it? How did they go from “This is impossible” to “Oh, I’m so grateful”? How did it happen? It happened.

Seating assignments are wonderful opportunities to turn it around, relatively easy compared with personal relationships with other beings. Our bleeding hearts want to turn it around with each other; we want to be reunited with each other, but we need the other person to help; somehow we can’t just unite on our own. Because the other person can wink, we wait for them. We say, “I can’t believe that you love me unless you wink at me. Please wink. I can’t believe you feel my heart reaching for you until you reach back. I can’t believe you trust my outstretched hand unless you take it.”

These are instructions in practice. We find these instructions in many places. As Shakespeare says in Hamlet,

Horatio. Oh, day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
Hamlet. And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

And we yearn for oneness. How can I express my yearning? With my mouth I express my yearning; with my body I ask the question, What? What is it? What is birth and death? What does it ask of me? What is it that cares?

Almost exactly half my life has been lived in Zen temples and monasteries. In the morning, I rise before dawn and shuffle sleepily to the zendo. Though painful difficulties often arise, friends and teachers are extremely kind and helpful to me. I cannot find words to fully express my gratitude and sense of good fortune for such a life. Trying to live a life of awakening is a joy beyond joy. Now it is autumn and I am approaching fifty. All around me and inside me, there is dying and sadness. I deeply question what real compassion is. How may I live the rest of my life to repay the love and kindness I have been given and to fulfill my responsibility for the welfare of all suffering beings? How can something helpful come from these mixed feelings?