Facing Fear - April 13, 2010

It's nice to see everybody again.

I just got back from seeing my teacher in North Carolina and had the luxury for the first few days of the intensive while I was there to listen to some talks by a man named Bill Porter who goes by the pen name Red Pine and he's a translator of Chinese and he's done a lot of translation of different sutras into English from the Chinese and Sanskrit.

And he made,

He touched on something during the talks that I wanted to just go forward with a little bit tonight.

There's several members of the Victoria Zen Center that have received the precepts,

That have received these Dharma names,

That have the character yu,

Which means courage,

Yu xin,

Dou yu,

And hou yu,

Yu,

Courage.

And where it came up is in this sutra that we just chanted at the beginning,

The Heart of Perfect Wisdom Sutra,

There's an aspect where suddenly one of the most fundamental points of our struggle,

One of the most fundamental aspects of practice is unveiled.

And it is not just a conceptual idea problem.

When we talk about mind in the West,

We're talking about an intellectual thing.

But when we talk about mind from the perspective of Buddhism,

We talk about both the mental as well as the emotional,

The complete center of consciousness.

So there's this line here that says,

The bodhisattva relies on prajna paramita with no hindrance in the mind,

No hindrance,

Therefore no fear.

Fear.

Our practice that we engage in here,

Zen practice,

Buddhist practice,

Has as one of its core tenets that we are fixated,

We are stuck on what has been called a delusion or a fundamental confusion.

I've spoken about this over and over again.

We take this conglomeration of senses and experiences and we imbue it with a characteristic,

A characteristic of permanence or lasting or solidity or separate and we name it.

We call it I,

We call it me,

We call it a self or a soul or a personality.

And from the perspective of Buddhism,

What we're doing when we do this is that we're not affirming something.

We're not affirming something that actually exists,

But rather we are negating the unified,

The complete totality of this universe,

Of this cosmos.

We take something which is completely unbroken and we divide it in our mind.

And we say,

There is me,

There's inside,

And there is all this other stuff that's outside.

This is the very root of our difficulty according to the teachings of Buddhism.

Fundamental confusion or delusion.

Once we've fixated the self,

Once we have unconditionally accepted the existence of this I that stands separate from everything,

Then we find ourselves in this difficult predicament.

We begin to clarify just what this thing is.

We begin to attach to habits,

To preferences,

To aversions,

To likes and dislikes,

To personality characteristics.

And all of these things we call I,

I,

I.

I'm this kind of person.

I'm that kind of person.

I like to do this,

But I would never do that.

And we take these things as being real,

Permanent,

Lasting.

But inevitably we find ourselves in situations where we cannot fulfill what is required of us.

We are limited by just who it is that we think we are.

Just who it is that we think we should be.

What it is that we think we can accomplish.

We are stuck and we are easily baited by what it is that we now think as we are certainly this.

We are obviously not all that.

And so we find ourselves in this position where we are looking for things on the outside.

I'm missing this.

If only I could get it.

If I could get it,

Then I would be complete.

And if I don't get it,

Then look,

I will remain empty or somehow incomplete.

When we take things in this way of being inside and outside,

Then it's very easy for us to see so many things that we take as being outside,

As being a threat.

Or so many things on the inside as being a weakness.

And so we are constantly put into this position of trying to protect.

To protect,

To defend,

To fulfill,

To shore up,

To stabilize this thing that we've created called self.

Which,

As I've already said,

From the perspective of Buddhadharma,

Is something which is entirely created in our mind.

What is it that keeps you from realizing completion in each activity?

What is it that holds you back?

What is it that keeps you small and separate?

It's nothing other than this separation,

This differentiation that we have adhered to in our own mind.

And it's false.

This is what the Sutra is talking about when it says,

The Bodhisattva relies on prajna paramita with no hindrance in the mind.

Prajna paramita means that which .

.

.

Prajna is often translated as wisdom,

But literally translated means that which comes before knowledge.

Before .

.

.

Okay,

To give a metaphor or an image,

If we take all things in this vast universe,

All identities,

All separations,

All distinction,

And we melt it down,

We dissolve it,

We manifest the dying activity for all of these things until,

Like a country lake early in the morning,

It comes to rest.

My teacher would call this the manifestation of zero,

Unconditional love.

Before there is a single ripple,

Before there is a single wave or disturbance,

We have prajna,

This manifestation of completion.

Before the knowledge,

Before the thinking mind breaks things apart into this and that,

We have prajna.

No hindrance in the mind simply refers to this very tendency that we have to .

.

.

Not just .

.

.

It's not just the breaking apart,

It's not just the differentiation of subject and object,

Inside and outside.

This is not the problem.

If we're unable to do this,

Then we'll find ourselves getting hit by cars.

But it's the taking it as being solid,

Taking it as being fixed or real,

Taking it as being permanent and lasting,

That causes us this great difficulty.

Hindrance in the mind.

Red Pine actually translates this as walls of the mind.

When we don't give rise to these obstructions,

When we don't give rise,

When we don't fixate,

When we don't attach to these things as being solid,

And by these things I mean even this idea of a separate self,

When we don't fall into the illusion,

The delusion of self and other,

Inside and outside,

Then what is it that we have to fear?

Fear is something that I think if we deeply investigate it in our lives,

Causes us great difficulty.

It keeps us from speaking to the person that we ought to speak to.

It keeps us from doing the things that we ought to take care of.

What is it that we're afraid of?

Are we afraid of the consequences of our actions?

Or are we afraid of losing,

Or somehow diminishing,

This idea of ourselves?

It's not just the fear of destruction that inspires this difficulty,

This struggle.

It's not just the fear of death,

Or being crushed,

Being humiliated,

Or embarrassed.

But even worse,

There is the fear of success.

There is the fear of breaking out of this shell we've created for ourselves.

For many of us,

It's easy to handle failure.

We've done that.

It reaffirms our limitations.

Oh,

I really can't do that.

But to succeed is to shatter this limited idea of self that we've been walking around with.

To gain some small inkling,

Some glimpse into the broader capacity of our true nature.

Limitless,

Expansive,

But unknown.

This practice is about letting down,

Letting go,

Breaking apart this concept of I,

This hindrance that we have created,

Invested in,

And attached to.

Meeting each moment clearly,

And manifesting our complete capacity in each activity that we engage in.

Whether it's doing the dishes,

Or whether it's driving our car,

Or whether it's making art,

Or making love.

How do you manifest your limitless true nature in this very moment?

So,

As we continue to practice,

Investigate this fear.

Investigate going beyond this thing that we call I.