[from a talk given by Sensei Tom Daijo Redden for Spring Sesshin, April 11, 2025]
“There is only one true heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.”
Roman Rolland
Good morning, everyone. It’s such a pleasure to be here with you this morning, on day two of our spring sesshin.
As I have mentioned here before, Joanna Macy is one of my heroes. She is in her 90’s now. She is a Buddhist teacher, environmentalist, scholar, systems theorist, practitioner and a long-term political activist. She spent the last 50-60 years dealing with the most pressing issues in the world. Initially, among other things, her main focus was the threat of nuclear war and what that meant for society and for the world. For the past 30 years she has focused her attention on the climate crisis in the world and its emotional/spiritual impact on us as caring human beings. She is one of the most inspiring people I have come across, combining a deep Buddhist practice and activism in the world.
For many years now, she has dealt with the issue of despair that has risen among many in light of the very real existential threats before us. She has worked with activists who were dealing with the prospect of global annihilation due to the prospect of nuclear war. If one actually enters that consciousness, it is indeed foreboding place to be. She developed practices and trainings that helped individuals develop a sense of personal empowerment while remaining active in the work of working for a healthy and safer world. Depression, anxiety and all sorts of mental health issues were characteristic of people doing this work. Her work involved asking the question of how we do the work without being overwhelmed by it, how do we remain positive while contemplating true horrors.
I was deeply moved when I read how she begins her workshops on despair: she explains that “I begin with a simple understanding of gratitude.” As I reflect upon these words, I too want to begin this talk from a place of gratitude- for those here in the zendo as well as the folks on Zoom. I want to express my gratitude for all of you here. I also want to give gratitude for the life I have been given. I want to begin with what informs my life when I wake up in the morning and when I go to bed at night. First, I begin with gratitude for my family, my beloved ones, my good health, good fortune and to live in a country which is relatively stable compared to the rest of the world, and all sorts of comforts that provide me with good ice cream and hot tubs and things like that for which I am eternally grateful.
I want to thank especially the folks here for whom this is your first time at a retreat here. I am a long-term Alcoholics Anonymous guy; over 30 years. In AA we always talk about the most important person in the room. It’s not the person with 30 years of sobriety who has been through the 12 steps 25 times.The folks that count the most at any given meeting are the people who have been sober for 12 hours, or for a week, or the person who are absolutely on the edge of drinking again. For me, as that AA guy, it brings me back. What is sobriety about? What is my life about? What is the practice of sobriety about? The guy who is struggling hour to hour is my inspiration because that was me at a certain point in my life and could be me today.
I mention that because we are students of the Dharma. This is a Dharma talk. What does that mean that makes it different from a regular talk? The word Dharma has a variety of meanings. One of the most common meanings is “teaching,’ as in the “Buddha’s Dharma.” There were many traveling teachers during the time of the Buddha, and they all had their own dharmas. At that time in northeastern India where the Buddha taught, it was a very fertile time of learning and teaching, and teachers would come through towns and villages and give talks. By most accounts, these events were common occurances. There was often a public meeting place where teachers would come and preach and debate philosophy. It was common when different teachers came and went, one might inquire with stranger, “whose dharma do you follow? meaning, who is your teacher?” The Buddha was one of many sramanas, or traveling ascetics at that time, and for many reasons that I won’t get into here, he emerged as the most influential teacher through the centuries.
According to Buddhist philosophy, the Dharma exists, and according to history, the Buddha discovered it. He did not invent it. The Dharma is not only a teachings about reality, some would argue that it is also reality itself. This is life, this is the Dharma, this is how it works, this is how the universe works and how human beings function in this universe. Buddhist philosophy talks about how there are many universes over time; they come and go, and each universe has the potential of having its own Buddha. Each Buddha has to discover the Dharma. A Buddha’s enlightenment comes from overcoming the illusion of self and uncovering the implicit buddha nature we are all born with.
We practice the Buddha dharma. One of the questions I ask myself is what is my dharma? What is my understanding of life, of reality, in light of my practice as a Buddhist? When I read about this idea that we all have to develop our own dharmas, I didn’t understand it for a really long time. Does each one of us need to develop our own dharma? Do we need to develop our understanding of the Buddha dharma and also our own angle on the dharma? Joseph Goldstein wrote an article on different enlightenments. He said that the Dalai Lama’s form of enlightenment is compassion. Thich Nhat Hanh’s is a mindfulness enlightenment. For other masters it is humor; they see the world as it truly is and with a sparkle in their eye.
I come back to the person in the AA meeting who has only been sober for 12 hours. It comes back to the question, what is our life about? I am working very closely with a dear friend who is struggling with sobriety. He had a year of sobriety, went out again, got arrested, got sober, went out again. This leads to the question: what is the life I want to lead? Part of my practice is to continue to develop my understanding of what my life is about. What is my dharma?
This spring we have been focusing on Shantideva, the 8th century Indian monk and scholar, who wrote The Way of the Bodhisattva. In many ways the Bodhisattva practice is our practice here at Green River Zen Center. The traditional definition of a bodhisattva is someone who does not enter full nirvana so that they may be reborn and can come back into the world to alleviate suffering for those left behind. That inspiration to help others, what we call, bodhicitta, implies that our Zen practice aims to help us wake up as fully as possible in order to most effectively live a life of love and compassion. As I look around the zendo at each one of you, I would say that we are all bodhisattva's here. We are here to wake up, to learn to love this life, to be happy, which translates invariably into helping others in the world be happy as well.
Our approach at Green River Zen Center fits neatly into the Mahayana tradition, the origins of which are open to debate but fall very roughly between 150 BCE and 150 CE. Previously, in what we call the Theravadan tradition today, most Buddhists believed that lay people could never be enlightened because they had too many attachments, be it their family, jobs, possessions, etc.. It was the monks, it was argued, who lived simple lives outside of family life and lived in an environment where meditation and simplicity could lead to awakening. The ideal Buddhist practitioner was the arhat, understood to be a monk or nun who became fully enlightened, was free from samsara, and therefore free from rebirth.
Over a few hundred years a new movement developed called the Mahayana, or the ‘great vehicle,” which contrasted itself with the Hinayana followers of the day, of the so-called “lesser vehicle.” (Some Buddhist ego there…no?) Part of this history usually entails the belief, at least among the Mahayanists, that the arhat’s goal was noble, and yet inadequate. The arhats took care of themselves, but what about all the people left behind? The Mahayana approach involved two major changes. First, they maintained that lay persons who developed a deep enough commitment to their practice could be enlightened. And second, the Mahayana ideal become the bodhisattva, who was seen by some as “superior” to the path of the arhat. The decision of the bodhisattva to not achieve nirvana in order to help alleviate the suffering of others in a new life is often portrayed as less selfih and more noble than the arhat path.
Our White Plum lineage and sangha follow the Bodhisattva model. It is a path of love, compassion and service.
Our daily core Bodhisattva Vow captures our commitment:
Beings are numberless, I vow to free them,
Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them,
Reality is boundless, I vow to perceive it,
The enlightened way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.
If we look at this and break this down, what we see is that the fundamental issue in all of this is the question of the self. Do we stand as an independent, self-existent person? Are we alone? Do we basically live in that fashion? Or, is that sense of solidity actually unreal? And in a Buddhist sense, yes, we are not solid. Every second we lose an estimated 30-40 million cells in our bodies; and gain about 4 million. This means in simple terms that we are a different person than we were a minute ago.
The core issue in our practice is “the self”. The question is, in terms of our Bodhisattva vows, when we let go of this sense that we are an independent, self-existent person in the world and come to understand that we are in a constant, non-stop state of flux, just as the world and the universe are. We understand the reality of sunyata, or emptiness, and that there is nothing permanent there. Our unhappiness comes from holding onto our opinions and our attitudes and our belief that we are something solid and that we have to defend it. The Bodhisattva is that person who understands that my own happiness, is inextricably bound with my ability to let go of the sense of self, that constant focus on “I” and “my”, and therefore be able to fully be with others, and the world at large.
As a bit of an aside here, I want to add that one of the things Joanna Macy is really clear on is that we live in a radically individualistic culture in the US. There are many wonderful things about this culture but the radical individualism is something that is very difficult in times of greatest change because we feel alone. With all the chaos going on, what do I do? Joanna Macy is looking at the most formidable issues in history with nuclear war and climate crisis and she is very clear in her work that what we need is to be together. Community allows us to be able to understand that the process is bigger than me; I can’t figure it out alone. The heart-to-heart sharing in community supports us in moving together through the experience.
Shantideva identifies two practices that may fit here. In order to be a Bodhisattva and serve other people, we have got to see ourselves as equal to everybody else. We are no different than others. The Dalai Lama often starts his books by acknowledging that everyone in the world just wants to be happy. Even the person who harms others, they just want to be happy, too. We are all equal. The second practice is to exchange the self for others. The idea is to be able to take on the suffering of the world and in return to extend love, kindness and compassion.
If we look at this idea today, the bodhisattva living their life to serve others, let’s just look at the world for a second. Turn on the news; it ain’t pretty. Choose a place that’s at the forefront: Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, the earthquake in Myanmar, climate change. These are the places that get our attention. Some places do not. We don’t hear much about Sudan. We never had a colony there and don’t pay it much attention. However, what has been happening there has been a civil war for two years. Much of this has to do with the big egos of the leaders involved. 150,000 people have died in the past two years. It is estimated that 9 million people are near starvation or are starving. 80-90% of the healthcare system has collapsed and the schools are closed. The cutting of USAID has eradicated 75% of the funding for the emergency kitchens in Sudan. Suffering is everywhere. It has always been there.
There are national issues happening in this country as well in terms of lack of services. Go to Greenfield, go to Brattleboro outside where I live. In Brattleboro, many store entrances have a person with a sign asking for money. There is the opiate crisis, the housing crisis. I talk to people who don’t talk to a parent or a sibling anymore. People we love are sick and dying. Our own health is changing too as we age. So here is the core question: If we are bodhisattvas, if we are dedicated to doing our part in alleviating suffering in the world, and we actually open our hearts not just to the people next to us but also to people across the world, how do we deal with all of that? There are millions of people who are dying in a horrible way, how do we as bodhisattvas carry that emotional burden? To say that it is overwhelming is an understatement.
How do we practice the Bodhisattva practice? I want to reference three different folks. The Buddha was not the only teacher during that time. There was Mahavira who was a teacher at that time who had come from Magadha, who had trained longer than the Buddha, and was the founder of Jainism. The question that was alive in India at that time was, “why do people suffer?” The Buddha grew up in a place called Kapilavastu. Kapila was a philosopher about a hundred years before the Buddha who was very well known in that part of India. I imagine that given that the Buddha grew up in Kapilavastu surely knew about him. Kapila asked the question, “why do people suffer?” The Buddha’s answer was unique and is what we know as the Four Noble Truths. When the Buddha died, the first set of teachings that were organized by the 500 monks right after the Buddha died, was the Vinayana, which is the record of rules to guide an ethical life for the monks and nuns. If you live an ethical life, the Four Noble Truths come easily. Number one is ethics, number two and three are meditation and mindfulness. Meditation is to develop the ‘mind training’ as the Tibetans call it, and being mindful throughout the day. What the Buddha argued in the second Noble Truth is about the idea of attachment. How do we let go of attachment? The eightfold path describes that. Our lineage provides the answer to that. If we were able to realize that fully, we would lessen our psychological load, through our meditation practice moment to moment.
One of the things that I have realized in my own life and in my own meditation practice is the analogy of the ocean. There is the endless activity of the waves and yet deep down in the depths of the ocean, there is stillness and quiet and seems able to deal with what’s on the surface with a level of equanimity. If we think about the surface of the ocean as our busy mind, there are all sorts of ripples, the waves come and go. If there is a storm, the waves are high, and it is always active. And yet if we are able to sit quietly, follow our breath, slow our heartbeat, and be still, we need not react with panic or stress. We can breath and keep our minds steady as we take in what is happening and work to be thoughtful and kind to ourselves and others as we respond.
Thank you for your patience and attention. Be well.
“There is only one true heroism in the world: to see the world as it is, and to love it.”
Roman Rolland
Good morning, everyone. It’s such a pleasure to be here with you this morning, on day two of our spring sesshin.
As I have mentioned here before, Joanna Macy is one of my heroes. She is in her 90’s now. She is a Buddhist teacher, environmentalist, scholar, systems theorist, practitioner and a long-term political activist. She spent the last 50-60 years dealing with the most pressing issues in the world. Initially, among other things, her main focus was the threat of nuclear war and what that meant for society and for the world. For the past 30 years she has focused her attention on the climate crisis in the world and its emotional/spiritual impact on us as caring human beings. She is one of the most inspiring people I have come across, combining a deep Buddhist practice and activism in the world.
For many years now, she has dealt with the issue of despair that has risen among many in light of the very real existential threats before us. She has worked with activists who were dealing with the prospect of global annihilation due to the prospect of nuclear war. If one actually enters that consciousness, it is indeed foreboding place to be. She developed practices and trainings that helped individuals develop a sense of personal empowerment while remaining active in the work of working for a healthy and safer world. Depression, anxiety and all sorts of mental health issues were characteristic of people doing this work. Her work involved asking the question of how we do the work without being overwhelmed by it, how do we remain positive while contemplating true horrors.
I was deeply moved when I read how she begins her workshops on despair: she explains that “I begin with a simple understanding of gratitude.” As I reflect upon these words, I too want to begin this talk from a place of gratitude- for those here in the zendo as well as the folks on Zoom. I want to express my gratitude for all of you here. I also want to give gratitude for the life I have been given. I want to begin with what informs my life when I wake up in the morning and when I go to bed at night. First, I begin with gratitude for my family, my beloved ones, my good health, good fortune and to live in a country which is relatively stable compared to the rest of the world, and all sorts of comforts that provide me with good ice cream and hot tubs and things like that for which I am eternally grateful.
I want to thank especially the folks here for whom this is your first time at a retreat here. I am a long-term Alcoholics Anonymous guy; over 30 years. In AA we always talk about the most important person in the room. It’s not the person with 30 years of sobriety who has been through the 12 steps 25 times.The folks that count the most at any given meeting are the people who have been sober for 12 hours, or for a week, or the person who are absolutely on the edge of drinking again. For me, as that AA guy, it brings me back. What is sobriety about? What is my life about? What is the practice of sobriety about? The guy who is struggling hour to hour is my inspiration because that was me at a certain point in my life and could be me today.
I mention that because we are students of the Dharma. This is a Dharma talk. What does that mean that makes it different from a regular talk? The word Dharma has a variety of meanings. One of the most common meanings is “teaching,’ as in the “Buddha’s Dharma.” There were many traveling teachers during the time of the Buddha, and they all had their own dharmas. At that time in northeastern India where the Buddha taught, it was a very fertile time of learning and teaching, and teachers would come through towns and villages and give talks. By most accounts, these events were common occurances. There was often a public meeting place where teachers would come and preach and debate philosophy. It was common when different teachers came and went, one might inquire with stranger, “whose dharma do you follow? meaning, who is your teacher?” The Buddha was one of many sramanas, or traveling ascetics at that time, and for many reasons that I won’t get into here, he emerged as the most influential teacher through the centuries.
According to Buddhist philosophy, the Dharma exists, and according to history, the Buddha discovered it. He did not invent it. The Dharma is not only a teachings about reality, some would argue that it is also reality itself. This is life, this is the Dharma, this is how it works, this is how the universe works and how human beings function in this universe. Buddhist philosophy talks about how there are many universes over time; they come and go, and each universe has the potential of having its own Buddha. Each Buddha has to discover the Dharma. A Buddha’s enlightenment comes from overcoming the illusion of self and uncovering the implicit buddha nature we are all born with.
We practice the Buddha dharma. One of the questions I ask myself is what is my dharma? What is my understanding of life, of reality, in light of my practice as a Buddhist? When I read about this idea that we all have to develop our own dharmas, I didn’t understand it for a really long time. Does each one of us need to develop our own dharma? Do we need to develop our understanding of the Buddha dharma and also our own angle on the dharma? Joseph Goldstein wrote an article on different enlightenments. He said that the Dalai Lama’s form of enlightenment is compassion. Thich Nhat Hanh’s is a mindfulness enlightenment. For other masters it is humor; they see the world as it truly is and with a sparkle in their eye.
I come back to the person in the AA meeting who has only been sober for 12 hours. It comes back to the question, what is our life about? I am working very closely with a dear friend who is struggling with sobriety. He had a year of sobriety, went out again, got arrested, got sober, went out again. This leads to the question: what is the life I want to lead? Part of my practice is to continue to develop my understanding of what my life is about. What is my dharma?
This spring we have been focusing on Shantideva, the 8th century Indian monk and scholar, who wrote The Way of the Bodhisattva. In many ways the Bodhisattva practice is our practice here at Green River Zen Center. The traditional definition of a bodhisattva is someone who does not enter full nirvana so that they may be reborn and can come back into the world to alleviate suffering for those left behind. That inspiration to help others, what we call, bodhicitta, implies that our Zen practice aims to help us wake up as fully as possible in order to most effectively live a life of love and compassion. As I look around the zendo at each one of you, I would say that we are all bodhisattva's here. We are here to wake up, to learn to love this life, to be happy, which translates invariably into helping others in the world be happy as well.
Our approach at Green River Zen Center fits neatly into the Mahayana tradition, the origins of which are open to debate but fall very roughly between 150 BCE and 150 CE. Previously, in what we call the Theravadan tradition today, most Buddhists believed that lay people could never be enlightened because they had too many attachments, be it their family, jobs, possessions, etc.. It was the monks, it was argued, who lived simple lives outside of family life and lived in an environment where meditation and simplicity could lead to awakening. The ideal Buddhist practitioner was the arhat, understood to be a monk or nun who became fully enlightened, was free from samsara, and therefore free from rebirth.
Over a few hundred years a new movement developed called the Mahayana, or the ‘great vehicle,” which contrasted itself with the Hinayana followers of the day, of the so-called “lesser vehicle.” (Some Buddhist ego there…no?) Part of this history usually entails the belief, at least among the Mahayanists, that the arhat’s goal was noble, and yet inadequate. The arhats took care of themselves, but what about all the people left behind? The Mahayana approach involved two major changes. First, they maintained that lay persons who developed a deep enough commitment to their practice could be enlightened. And second, the Mahayana ideal become the bodhisattva, who was seen by some as “superior” to the path of the arhat. The decision of the bodhisattva to not achieve nirvana in order to help alleviate the suffering of others in a new life is often portrayed as less selfih and more noble than the arhat path.
Our White Plum lineage and sangha follow the Bodhisattva model. It is a path of love, compassion and service.
Our daily core Bodhisattva Vow captures our commitment:
Beings are numberless, I vow to free them,
Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them,
Reality is boundless, I vow to perceive it,
The enlightened way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.
If we look at this and break this down, what we see is that the fundamental issue in all of this is the question of the self. Do we stand as an independent, self-existent person? Are we alone? Do we basically live in that fashion? Or, is that sense of solidity actually unreal? And in a Buddhist sense, yes, we are not solid. Every second we lose an estimated 30-40 million cells in our bodies; and gain about 4 million. This means in simple terms that we are a different person than we were a minute ago.
The core issue in our practice is “the self”. The question is, in terms of our Bodhisattva vows, when we let go of this sense that we are an independent, self-existent person in the world and come to understand that we are in a constant, non-stop state of flux, just as the world and the universe are. We understand the reality of sunyata, or emptiness, and that there is nothing permanent there. Our unhappiness comes from holding onto our opinions and our attitudes and our belief that we are something solid and that we have to defend it. The Bodhisattva is that person who understands that my own happiness, is inextricably bound with my ability to let go of the sense of self, that constant focus on “I” and “my”, and therefore be able to fully be with others, and the world at large.
As a bit of an aside here, I want to add that one of the things Joanna Macy is really clear on is that we live in a radically individualistic culture in the US. There are many wonderful things about this culture but the radical individualism is something that is very difficult in times of greatest change because we feel alone. With all the chaos going on, what do I do? Joanna Macy is looking at the most formidable issues in history with nuclear war and climate crisis and she is very clear in her work that what we need is to be together. Community allows us to be able to understand that the process is bigger than me; I can’t figure it out alone. The heart-to-heart sharing in community supports us in moving together through the experience.
Shantideva identifies two practices that may fit here. In order to be a Bodhisattva and serve other people, we have got to see ourselves as equal to everybody else. We are no different than others. The Dalai Lama often starts his books by acknowledging that everyone in the world just wants to be happy. Even the person who harms others, they just want to be happy, too. We are all equal. The second practice is to exchange the self for others. The idea is to be able to take on the suffering of the world and in return to extend love, kindness and compassion.
If we look at this idea today, the bodhisattva living their life to serve others, let’s just look at the world for a second. Turn on the news; it ain’t pretty. Choose a place that’s at the forefront: Israel, Gaza, Ukraine, the earthquake in Myanmar, climate change. These are the places that get our attention. Some places do not. We don’t hear much about Sudan. We never had a colony there and don’t pay it much attention. However, what has been happening there has been a civil war for two years. Much of this has to do with the big egos of the leaders involved. 150,000 people have died in the past two years. It is estimated that 9 million people are near starvation or are starving. 80-90% of the healthcare system has collapsed and the schools are closed. The cutting of USAID has eradicated 75% of the funding for the emergency kitchens in Sudan. Suffering is everywhere. It has always been there.
There are national issues happening in this country as well in terms of lack of services. Go to Greenfield, go to Brattleboro outside where I live. In Brattleboro, many store entrances have a person with a sign asking for money. There is the opiate crisis, the housing crisis. I talk to people who don’t talk to a parent or a sibling anymore. People we love are sick and dying. Our own health is changing too as we age. So here is the core question: If we are bodhisattvas, if we are dedicated to doing our part in alleviating suffering in the world, and we actually open our hearts not just to the people next to us but also to people across the world, how do we deal with all of that? There are millions of people who are dying in a horrible way, how do we as bodhisattvas carry that emotional burden? To say that it is overwhelming is an understatement.
How do we practice the Bodhisattva practice? I want to reference three different folks. The Buddha was not the only teacher during that time. There was Mahavira who was a teacher at that time who had come from Magadha, who had trained longer than the Buddha, and was the founder of Jainism. The question that was alive in India at that time was, “why do people suffer?” The Buddha grew up in a place called Kapilavastu. Kapila was a philosopher about a hundred years before the Buddha who was very well known in that part of India. I imagine that given that the Buddha grew up in Kapilavastu surely knew about him. Kapila asked the question, “why do people suffer?” The Buddha’s answer was unique and is what we know as the Four Noble Truths. When the Buddha died, the first set of teachings that were organized by the 500 monks right after the Buddha died, was the Vinayana, which is the record of rules to guide an ethical life for the monks and nuns. If you live an ethical life, the Four Noble Truths come easily. Number one is ethics, number two and three are meditation and mindfulness. Meditation is to develop the ‘mind training’ as the Tibetans call it, and being mindful throughout the day. What the Buddha argued in the second Noble Truth is about the idea of attachment. How do we let go of attachment? The eightfold path describes that. Our lineage provides the answer to that. If we were able to realize that fully, we would lessen our psychological load, through our meditation practice moment to moment.
One of the things that I have realized in my own life and in my own meditation practice is the analogy of the ocean. There is the endless activity of the waves and yet deep down in the depths of the ocean, there is stillness and quiet and seems able to deal with what’s on the surface with a level of equanimity. If we think about the surface of the ocean as our busy mind, there are all sorts of ripples, the waves come and go. If there is a storm, the waves are high, and it is always active. And yet if we are able to sit quietly, follow our breath, slow our heartbeat, and be still, we need not react with panic or stress. We can breath and keep our minds steady as we take in what is happening and work to be thoughtful and kind to ourselves and others as we respond.
Thank you for your patience and attention. Be well.