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[Last updated: 29 September 1993]
"CALLING ON THE NAME OF AVALOKITESHVARA".
[this text was first published in the MIND MOON CIRCLE, Winter 1991 pp
1-11]
This text addresses some of the most fundamental and delicate religious
issues. Therefore, it should be read, quoted and analysed in a mindful
way.
Copyright 1991 (c) by John Tarrant and Sydney Zen Center 251 Young St.,
Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia. Tel: + 61 2 660 2993
CALLING ON THE NAME OF AVALOKITESHVARA
by John Tarrant Roshi
Winter 1991
It is said that, even in hell, if you remember the name or if you call
on the name of Avalokiteshvara, you will find freedom.
Avalokiteshvara, as I am sure you know, is the bodhisattva of compassion
and insight, who appears in the Heart Sutra. This figure is known under
many names. It is our task as students of the Way to realise the insight
of Avalokiteshvara for ourselves. This cannot of course be done just by
imitating and following along. Fortunately, it can only be achieved by
finding our own Way and our own practice. In our own uniqueness lies the
great dharma. Keizan Jokin said, "However immensely diverse the
mountains, rivers and lands and all forms and appearances may be, all of
them are in the eye of the Buddha, and you too are standing in the eye
of the Buddha." It is not simply that you are standing there: the eye
has become you. The eye of the Buddha and the eye of Avalokiteshvara
have become everyone's whole body, each of us standing tall. This
enlightenment needs to be refreshed and rediscovered in each person and
in each generation, in each individual of each generation and in each
moment of each of our lives. There is a path into it and today I would
like to talk a little about some of the guideposts on that path.
I have been very interested lately in the interaction between character
and insight. Character was very much a concern in old China when the
koan curriculum was being developed, and I think belongs with Zen.
Yamada Roshi used to speak about Zen as the perfection of character and
when I looked at myself and my friends who were longtime Zen students I
found that hard to believe; but I think I begin to get some glimmerings
of what he meant. He certainly did not mean an easy piety. And you may
also remember that Yamada Roshi used to emphasise insight a great deal,
and was known for his relentless pursuit of enlightenment when he was a
student. Insight is the dazzling, clear, eternal awareness of the
presence of Avalokiteshvara in each moment: the presence of all moments
and all places in this moment and this place. So that is very simple,
really. That one is solved, I guess; we know about insight.
Character is something else. Character is I think more related to time,
and grows and develops with a sort of reptilian slowness. And insight
cannot go bad on you: either you have insight or you do not. I guess you
can lose insight through bad living or not maintaining your practice,
but really insight is a fairly clear matter. The realm of character is
different, though. Character does change; we can become more whole and
occasionally we meet some people who become less whole. A flaw in their
character gradually takes them over. I think of character as being
primarily the willingness to be with, to read, to listen to, the flow of
things that we often call the Tao, for short. It is the willingness not
to separate from the current of life. And with this goes the ability to
experience our own lives and the willingness to live our lives fully,
without resisting our experience. This takes courage, equanimity,
steadfastness, honesty. And I think it really helps if we are willing to
be foolish a lot. There is always that noticing with a sense of wonder
that is important and helpful in the character work.
An old Sung dynasty Chinese teacher said this: "If you want to
investigate this path all the way, you must make the determination firm
and unbending until you reach enlightenment." (That's the insight side
of it.) "Afterwards it is left to nature whether you experience calamity
or distress, gain or loss, and you should not try unreasonably to escape
them." I think this is very interesting and true. Character relates to
our willingness to be small as well as grand. The flow of things carries
us along, and fighting the flow does not help, as far as I've ever
noticed. It is how we are with that, what attitude we have to being
carried along, that is crucial. Do we have peace in our hearts, even
when there is an external calamity, even when we are in the midst of
struggle? In the midst of darkness can we find, can we touch, light? If
we have no consciousness of the greatness within the small, then we have
no enlightenment, no insight; then we do not know about the name of
Avalokiteshvara. But Avalokiteshvara is also the other side, is also
compassion, and if we have no awareness of our own smallness, if we
resist and pull away from our smallness, the rumbling stomach, the
aching knees, the sorrows and griefs, the joys and frivolities of zazen,
if we try to pull too much away from those and fight with them and have
a hostile attitude toward what comes up, then we are clinging too much
to the insight side of things, too much to the dazzling clarity. We know
then that one flower holds eternity, but we do not know that one aching
knee also holds eternity, one destructive thought also holds eternity.
Some people do rather well in a temporary kind of way by clinging to the
insight side of things, almost as a refuge from developing character. I
think as Zen students we are always veering towards one side or the
other of any dichotomy we can name, so this is not a great shame. But I
see this in Zen, I have known this in myself. My own teacher and the
teacher of many of you, Robert Aitken Roshi, was telling me about a
former student of his, who worked hard at his koan work but never really
had a very good touch with it; it felt like he had never got down below
his neck. He wanted to teach, but Aitken Roshi wouldn't let him, so he
went around, visited many teachers, and finally found one who told him
he could teach. Now he travels and teaches small communities. Aitken
Roshi told me how he was talking with another rather crusty old Japanese
teacher whose wife runs a sushi bar and who is very fond of jazz and who
lives in Berkeley. This crusty Japanese teacher was saying he heard this
fellow giving a teisho, and Aitken Roshi said, "Well, how was it?" and
the teacher said "One chopstick!" (A restaurant metaphor.) This is not
really so much to be harsh with this person; it is to use this person as
a representative of a state of mind that we can all have, where we cling
to our meditation experiences and neglect the other side of our lives,
neglect to look in at all, neglect to know our own hearts.
So we have to be patient with ourselves. No matter where we are in our
training this is an absolute necessity. Over and over again we think we
need to be somewhere else, whether we are at the beginning of our
training, or far along, or teaching, or wherever. And we must find the
truth right here, right now; we must find our joy here, now. I have even
known people come to me in dokusan and say, "Well, I am waiting for
sesshin to get over with so I can do some peaceful meditation, without
all these bells ringing." How seductive it is, the thought of tomorrow.
... We must find our understanding here. You know I moved to California
from Hawaii some years ago now, and people ask me where I came from and
I say Hawaii and they say, "Oh, it must have been wonderful to live in
Hawaii," and I say "Well, I thought California was wonderful." And then
I come out to Australia I come to Perth and people say "Where do you
live?" and I say "In California," and they say "It must be wonderful to
live in California," and I say "Well, I think Perth is pretty nice": you
know how it is. We must find it here; it is always here; this is where
the grass is green.
Another side of the character work is, I think, to trust mystery, to
trust the not-knowing within ourselves, not only as a subjective state
but as an objective feature of the Way, as something that is really
intrinsic to the Way. It is a sense of trusting in what is mysterious,
what is not known and not limited by knowing. What we know always in
some way shuts out the rest of the world. It is always that ten percent
that is dazzlingly clear. There is a story of a fellow who was searching
around for his keys in the weeds under a lamppost. Somebody else came
along and helped him search for an hour or more. Finally this person
said, "We've gone over all this ground--are you sure you lost them
here?" And he said, "No, I didn't lose them here actually, I lost them
over there, but there's more light here." That is our knowing; that is
what we know. If we are open to the darkness, it is very rich, it is
fecund; and that is on the character side of things.
Also it happens that we get into a kind of revolt, particularly in the
koan work because it is so fraught with success and failure, and good
and bad, and acceptance versus struggle, and all that stuff. We get into
a revolt about it, and the koan either seems far away or it seems like
an impossibly difficult, tense way of working in zazen. People get sick
in the stomach and throw up, or come in and yell at me -- all sorts of
things go on. But the task from the point of view of character here is
to find a way to do the koan, to unite with the koan, no matter what;
not to cling to a particular idea of how to do it. If your particular
idea of how you are doing it is not working, then try something else. If
you were trying to fix a leaking tap in the sink you would try something
else if one way didn't work. I think to use that kind of common sense in
meditation is also important, not to be too literal-minded.
Sometimes technique too is divided into the character and insight sides:
the shikan-taza -- which is the great acceptance, the great sky mind,
the consciousness that spreads over the whole universe like the rising
sun -- and the sharpness of the koan way. However, I think at bottom
there is not a lot of difference in the ways we meditate and there need
not be a lot. If you emphasise the peacefulness of zazen, sooner or
later you will have to take up the sharpness, take that extra step; if
you emphasise greatly the insight side and the sharpness, sooner or
later you will have to come to an acceptance and a peacefulness. Always,
whenever we have a dualism, in the end zazen unites them; even character
and insight are this way.
Meditators have many things come up, but one thing that is very
characteristic is fear. Fear takes many forms. It can be extraverted and
take the form of anger and resistance against things in the outer world,
against things in the meditation, which is some fear of going deeper. Or
it can be quite clear that we are just plain scared, and fantasies of
fear run in our heads and we have nightmares on night two, or we are
afraid of pain. I think a large part of the character work is just to
become tolerant of this. If it is true that we need to experience our
own lives, we need to notice what is happening, we need to notice that
we are having a feeling or a thought. Often we don't: we are just
subject to it, for days sometimes. The first thing is to notice it, then
the next thing is not to take it too seriously, to have a kind of ease
and space around it, an equanimity with what comes up, a generosity of
mind; so that if fear comes up we also have the attitude of "Thank you
for everything; I have nothing to complain of." And THEN scream! And
then after that say, "Thank you for everything; I have nothing to
complain of: I just screamed."
I think this equanimity then allows us that necessary foolishness which
is essential for all learning and which is spoken about by many great
teachers when they have emphasised the value of the mind of the child --
that open, clear sight.
A woman told me a story recently that I thought very typical of the
process of the Way for some of us. This was a deep vision she had had,
many years before she told it. It had ruled her life ever since, and was
only just starting to transform, which is how she came to remember it
and so to tell it to me. This is the vision:
There was a desolate, post-holocaust city, a science fiction city,
ruined and devastated after a war. On the outskirts of the city, in a
desert, was a young prince, standing up. In some way this young prince
was the woman. All the young prince had was one of those ornaments in
which, when you turn them upside down, it snows. She thought this a
strange vision to have: a ruined city, and a young prince standing with
this ornament. In the vision, the prince looked at the devastation in
the city, and he could not bear the suffering. And he looked at his
little ornament with its snow scene and pines and its mountains, and he
thought, "What a stupid thing this is; it is just a mechanical thing.
There is no hope." He threw it down, and it shattered.
When she told me this my body shook a little. There was such despair in
that gesture of throwing down the one beautiful thing. What I thought
about her state of mind was that at the time of the vision there was
nothing for her to hold on to, nothing at all, and that somehow she
needed to go further into the pain, to experience more fully the
darkness, and that for her throwing away this ornament was the movement
even further into the darkness, into the suffering. I think there are
times in zazen when we just have to accept that we do this. We fight
with the zazen so much: we just have to bear it and endure any way we
can, and we go into the difficult times. Quite often I have known people
to leave a retreat at such times, but then come back; and sometimes good
people leave and come back. I think it is very important to stay if you
can. But even Hakuin, one of the great teachers of the Japanese lineage,
gave up zazen for a while. He had a great fight with his zazen and lost.
He decided his life was miserable and he would get what few pleasures he
could by carousing and reading poetry. And eventually, as is the way of
things, the zazen seduced him and led him back. He could not quite leave
it alone: he had not resolved his koan and brought him back.
But there is another possibility which just began to occur to this
woman, which is why I think the memory of the vision came back. This
possibility is that all is not lost. When we see the suffering in the
world, there is still a treasure in our own awareness, and that treasure
relates to our attention. There was an opportunity in that little
ornament, with its trees and its snow scene, which was to understand
that it was the source, the talismanic source. It is the koan. And out
of the koan the whole city is rebuilt or recreated, the entire world
restored, pristine and beautiful, over and over again. So the great
universe, with its joy and sorrow, peace and light, returns, even after
suffering, in spite of the vastness of human suffering. Sometimes we can
only get to this restoration by going through the darkness, and
character is the willingness to hold in the darkness and to be held in
the darkness. Some people have told me that in the hard times in zazen
they call upon everybody who is wise that they have ever known to sit
with them, and somehow that holds them. And that can be very helpful,
can't it? Other people have had just spontaneously old teachers come to
them while they are sitting and hold them. I have had this experience
myself, of an old teacher whom I had always wished to meet and who died
before I met him, coming and walking behind me while I was sitting at
night.
So character relates to the willingness to use any means and to be
inventive when it comes time for holding. When I think of the word
"holding" I think of arms and the maternal quality that develops in us
in zazen, that very steady, deep quality, where all sorts of things come
and go, and we have an equanimity with them. This is the enduring wisdom
of being able to stay with it. And then not to take the darkness too
literally. "I am sad; I am in pain; I am tired; I am bored; I am
distracted": yes, fortunately! This is the great life. And then of
course we find that it is a little harder to distinguish between sorrow
and joy. This too will change; this is not the whole thing. Because I am
happy does not mean I will always be happy because I have had a great
experience does not mean that I should cling to that great experience.
Even in hell you remember the name of Avalokiteshvara: that is this
awareness.
Avalokiteshvara has many names in the Buddhist tradition alone (and
three sexes as far as I can tell -- masculine, feminine, and
androgynous): Chenresig ; Tara, who is a manifestation and comes in
various colours -- for example, whine and green; Kuan-yin, who also
comes in various colours, and comes with or without an infant, and in
various sexes; Kanjizai, Kanzeon, Kannon; perhaps Mary and Isis; and on
and on. Many forms.
An old-time Zen student, a woman, in California, who has sat for many
years, and is a very senior person, told me this wonderful story from
Gregory Bateson. One time he gave a talk at Green Gulch Zen Centre, and
spoke of a young boy who had psychotic episodes. The boy was
schizophrenic and the whole world would close in on him and become
terrifying. He would think that people were invading his mind with their
thoughts, and trying to programme him through what was on the
television, and telling him things to do. So he would spend time in the
in-patient ward, and receive medication, and gradually his mind would
clear, and they would release him, and he would go home, and get worse,
and he would come back to the in-patient ward: there was this cycle. One
time he was going home for Thanksgiving dinner, and he really wanted to
do better this time, and he talked to his psychotherapist about how to
do better. So he went home and he was having dinner, when he noticed
that the peas were too green, and the turkey looked just too much like a
turkey, because it was thoroughly poisoned, and he knew by the way
people were looking at him that they were all wondering whether he was
going to catch on to this or whether he was going to eat the turkey. And
then he noticed that his mind was doing this. For the first time he
noticed that his mind was doing this: he remembered the name of
Avalokiteshvara in the midst of hell. He thought, "Oh, my mind is seeing
the peas as too green!" and he burst out in ecstatic laughter -- and
they carried him away. But still, he understood; he remembered the name.
"Thank you for everything; I have nothing to complain of." And it did
not matter if the people around him did not understand, because for the
first time he remembered the name of Avalokiteshvara.
So if you remember the name of Avalokiteshvara, calamity or joy may
visit you: that is not the point. You can see how remembering the name
of Avalokiteshvara actually involves a union of character and insight.
It was an insight to notice that he was noticing that the peas were too
green. And then to have equanimity even when he was carted away, that is
character. Even when you're carted away, you shouldn't go psychotic
again; you need to hold through that time.
Character involves a willingness not to be grand all the time and not to
be perfect. In this boy's case, suddenly he still had the role of being
psychotic; it was thrust upon him even though he did not have the inner
experience. Ceremony is quite a good teacher for me it this way. One of
my friends who is a senior Zen student and is often tanto in his
particular group is really terrible at ceremonies and has been a
wonderful teacher for me. I'm not very good but I can fake it, and he
can't even fake it. He stands up to hand me the incense, and he breaks
it; so then he's really careful the next time and he doesn't break it,
but he trips on his robe and he falls into me, and I fall into the
altar, and the incense gets knocked over. And things are like this,
things are demonic. Just as for some people their feelings are demonic,
for him things are demonic, and they don't stay still. When he walks
into the dojo the incense pot has moved overnight. He has been a great
teacher for me to be at ease with that part of myself, so that I can
just go and do the ceremony as best I can. Often the incense falls over,
but there is a kind of relief in that. It is good sometimes to be small.
Then I really learn too from those of my friends who are much better at
doing the ceremonies than I am. Perhaps they need to learn some other
things; ceremony is not a problem for them. We perhaps symbolise this
willingness to be small, to be nondescript, by the black, the raggedness
The inner raggedness is so characteristic of zazen, when we begin to
attend and the mind just won't take any notice of our intention to
attend. There is nothing much we can do with it; we must just trust the
mystery of this unfocused, raggedy mind, this moth-eaten mind. Something
plain and commonplace and very ordinary. So it is good not to be afraid
of our smallness.
Another longtime Zen student who is a marvellous artist told me a story
that bears on character. She was on the metro in Paris, and a man who
was very, very drunk got on. He was a young burly man who had no shirt
and had tattoos all over his arms. He lurched on to the car and came
past my friend and stood between two women on either side of the aisle.
One of the women was strikingly beautiful, and he leaned over this woman
and began to abuse her. My friend, who is Asian and petite, became
afraid and began to do the prudent thing and edged back towards the door
of the car. And then she saw the woman sitting across the aisle from the
beautiful woman reach up and take the man's hand. Her hand just floated
up. As if out of the emptiness of the universe her hand floated up and
took his hand, and he burst into tears, and softened immediately. That
woman remembered the name of Avalokiteshvara; she was open to it. My
friend said she felt she had missed something; she felt a little ashamed
of her prudence at that moment. I think we can all recognise when we
have done something like this. Of course, sometimes edging towards the
exit is the right thing to do. But still, there was something even
better than the right thing to do, which was to remember the name of
Avalokiteshvara.
When we are willing to be open, and rather small and ignorant, the great
joy comes of its own, and in a sense it is none of our business anyway.
It is just our business to walk the Way and to remember the name of
Avalokiteshvara. The temptation of being all-wise is not really very
interesting once we give in to it. Sanghas of course have a rhythm where
they get really good at something, and then that creates its own
tightness and difficulty, so there is some upheaval and they get awful
at things for a while but they are rather exciting and new; and then
there is an opening and a gradual rise until we get good at something,
and then we fall apart again. It is the same in our individual practice
Equanimity in the midst of the coming and going is really so important.
It is the fruit of the Way, but it is also the discipline we need in
order to experience the fruit of the Way. To be rather serene and just
keep walking.
The dharma then is rather full of happy errors. If we are willing to be
small and walk along, we will find that the dharma really does take care
of us: we are guided, we have the right accident at the right time,
things like that. We find that we fall into the error of pushing too
hard, and then we stop, fatigue stops us, and we think that this is an
awful thing, but it relaxes a little, and then suddenly the mind becomes
quite clear. So do not despise or be snobbish about any state of mind
that arises. When we are blocked we must trust that we are blocked; that
is where we are. We must trust that this too is where Avalokiteshvara
name has magical power. We must find a way through it or into it or
around it; become one with it or suffer it; climb over it, be squashed
flat by iin. We must have some relationship with it. And as long as we
are in a relationship with it, Avalokiteshvara is there. And what is
more interesting anyway than walking the Tao; what is more precious than
the opportunity to walk the Tao? There is more value in the difficult
blocks, more courage and more serenity. It is easy to be courageous when
we can see the clear path ahead. The only use of courage really is when
there is mist all around and we must take that next step not knowing
where the next beyond that will lead. When Shakyamuni stopped his
ascetic practices he took some nourishment given to him by a woman, so
the feminine sense of being as well as the great sense of doing was
allowed in and he became more whole. Then he looked up and the accident
of the morning star occurred. Have you thought: what if Venus were not
in the evening sky at that time? No Shakyamuni, no Buddhism. We must
trust that :some other accident would have opened his heart and mind.
I have been interested for some years now in the "I Ching", which is not
formally a Buddhist book but a wise and interesting one, and I think a
Zen book, concerned with integration of character and insight. It is an
oracle, the hexagram of the oracle is made up of six lines: two units of
meaning, called trigrams, of three lines each. The hexagram for peace
has the trigram for earth above the trigram for heaven. Very
interesting. When heaven is above earth, you have stagnation,
standstill, because there is the tendency for the world of insight, the
world of heaven, to go off into its purity and clarity, and the world of
earth to stagnate into the obtuseness and lumpishness of matter. There
is separation, there is no creative interchange and flux. But the
hexagram for peace, or "tai", has the intermingling, where heaven is
actually below earth and there is an intermingling of the worlds of
character and insight. The great clarity of zazen is simultaneous with
the distraction, the memory from childhood, the pain in the knees; and
so we no longer say, "I wish the pain would stop so I can do some
meditation." This too is meditation; this is the great life.
We do not chase perfection. When heaven is below earth is when the young
prince discovers that this toy is the source of all things and joy. The
play, and the spirit of the child: you just turn it upside down and
every time it snows. Just like Avalokiteshvara: every time you call,
there she is, calling.
So it is important to stay with the joy of the smallness and the joy of
the mystery. Another old Sung dynasty teacher said, "The one who
preserves the Way through old age to death in the mountains and valleys
is not as good as the one who practices the Way with a group of people
in a community." It is good to have the smallness and the obnoxiousness,
we might say, of sangha; dealing with the dailiness, dealing with those
petty difficulties that always arise when we have to live with others.
If we have the equanimity and the insight here, how much richer and
deeper it is. Practising together.
A Sung dynasty teacher called Kuan-lin looked unhappy and worried. One
of his many, many students came to him and said, "What's going on? You
look a little disturbed." Kuan-lin said "Well, I haven't found anyone
yet to be the accountant." The student wanted to help, and recommended
the assistant superintendent. The teacher said, "Yes, he's pretty good,
but not quite right, I think. He's a little rough, and I'm afraid petty
people might resent him and intrigue against him and say he didn't
deserve it." So the student said "How about the attendant? He's honest
and prudent." Kuan-lin said, "Yes, he's prudent, but it might not be
good for his training. The supervisor is pretty good, and I'm still
thinking about it." Later the students asked another teacher, "Why did
Kuan-lin, who was a great teacher, worry about these small and petty
things?" The other teacher said, "Those who are really concerned about
the Way have really made this fundamental. The ancient sages are like
this. We must be concerned with everything in the dharma; we must let
our compassion run to everything in the universe."
In sesshin you manifest the compassion of the dharma; you call on the
name of Avalokiteshvara just by the sincerity of your zazen. That
sincerity is sufficient. Each moment we come back to the freshness, and
it really does not matter what the moment before was, how stale it felt,
or how weary, or how far away from the name of Avalokiteshvara. We must
have that willingness to call on it at this moment and realise that when
we do call on it, this moment fills eternity. There is nothing else in
the universe. These hills and the birds and the great wind in the trees:
all are the calling of Avalokiteshvara. And then we create the
conditions by which the moon rises. We do not make it happen; the moon
rises of ins own without the help of human hands. All we need to do is
call on the name of Avalokiteshvara over and over again.
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TITLE OF WORK: Calling On the Name of Avalokiteshvara
FILENAME: AVALOKIT.ZIP (Internet: tarrant-teisho-91-winter.txt)
AUTHOR: John Tarrant, Roshi
AUTHOR'S ADDRESS: California Diamond Sangha, Santa Rosa, CA
PUBLISHER'S ADDRESS: "Mind Moon Circle", Sydney Zen Centre, 251 Young St
Annandale, Sydney, NSW 2038, Australia.
Tel: + 61 2 660 2993
DATE OF PUBLICATION: 1991
ORIGIN SITE: coombs.anu.edu.au
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