Real Life with Ryuei

An off the cuff response about Everything!

In another forum the question was asked about taking up Buddhist practice again, and how to it properly, and so on. It prompted the following thoughts which I would like to share here:

I find it exceedingly difficult in the midst of full-time job, family, and what all to maintain a consistent daily practice. However, I at least try to make sure I change the water offering each morning and chant a few Odaimoku before leaving the house, and I chant Odaimoku before going to bed. During the day, I keep a string of juzu (prayer beads) in my pocket (the 27 bead version) and chant several rounds throughout the day silently to myself.

Ideally, I try to do a service once a day, usually in the evening after everyone has gone to bed and/or when they are not in the living room watching t.v. or doing homework or something. For me, a service consists of several short prayers and dedications centered around chanting parts of chapters 2 and 16 of the Lotus Sutra and the Odaimoku. On occasion I can make this a very elaborate service and incorporate liturgical hymns, prostrations, dharani, other passages of the Lotus Sutra, and other prayers and dedications.

Several times a week I find the time to do silent sitting meditation as well - though to be honest this is usually only on Wednesday night and Sunday afternoon when I am sitting with others. Again, this is something that I would like to make time for on a more consistent basis at least once a day.

The thing is - the Buddha, bodhisattvas, and protective deities are not stand-ins for some angry Jehovah who is going to blast us if we don't pay enough lip service, or don't pay the proper kind of lip service. That is monotheistic superstition, which unfortunately too many carry over into Buddhism. For that matter, people from traditional Buddhist countries can be just as superstitious, except that they tend to attribute their bad fortune not just to angry deities but to angry spirits and the peevish ghosts of their ancestors. It's all a bunch of b.s. When it comes to our practice - don't worry about spirits and gods, demons and ghosts, or some metaphysical protection racket. Worry about the kind of person that you want to be and the kinds of mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual excercises and forms of cultivation that will help you to be that kind of person. All the blessings and punishments will ultimately come from your own care and consideration and/or neglect of your own life.

Now in my case I have found that young adulthood was an easy time to practice Buddhism. Deceptively easy in fact. One is full of high spirits, energy, untested ideals, and open vistas of hope and possibility. There is no better time to take up and cultivate a consistent spiritual disicipline. In fact, one even has a lot of free time in which to do it. Aside from the odd class or two during the day, and the occasional need to study or write a quick paper or two, one is on one's own, not really even responsible yet for one's own well-being (if one's parents and/or scholarships are getting you through college), and as long as one doesn't waste all one's time partying and then recovering from partying one has lots of leisure time to fit in staring at walls and/or chanting until one's jaw drops off.

But then adulthood and adult responsibilities comes along. One has to hold a full-time job, pay bills, help one's child(ren) with their homework and getting ready for school and taking them to various playdates or appointments and putting them to bed and perhaps read a bedtime story. One needs to try to find quality time with one's spouse (itself a challenge esp. if she works full-time also), and then there are various household chores and such. One doesn't have the leisure time or even the massive amounts of excess energy as in the past. In fact, one even begins to crave some unstructured time. Also, by this time one has become disillusioned with most religious institions and spiritual movements. One has seen enough of them to know how human they really are. Ulterior motives have been ferreted out, and ideals have been tested and found wanting. As they say - familiarity breeds contempt. This is no less true for ourselves - it isn't just the outside world that is disillusioning. One becomes quite fed up with one's own hypocricy, laziness, vanity, self-serving attitudes, and general all around weaknesses and failings. All of this is very disheartening and saps the motivation that formerly fueled a rigorous dedication to various spiritual programs. In adulthood there really is not much time for superfluous bs or fatuous hobbies - and religion (esp. some bizarred exotic foreign religion that only alienates rather than brings one together with a greater community) in adulthood can come to seem very much like just another hobby, a hang-on from young adulthood.

So really - why bother! Never mind this silly "am I doing it right?" business - as though Jehovah were looking over our shoulders like some kind of drill sergeant on the lookout for any little mistakes. There is no Jehovah! There are no cosmic drill sergeants. There is just our superego and/or that craven part of the mind that wants to still buy into some magical view of the world where if you say the correct magic words and make the correct magic gestures using just the right magic tools one can make the world conform to one's wishes. Life is not like that. So why bother with all this "mummery"?(Isn't that a great word? Nichiren Shu is using it in its current translation of its liturgical manual for ministers to describe what Nichiren Buddhism can be reduced to through ignorance of the true purpose of its ceremonies.)

Well - here is what I am thinking at this time: That daily spiritual practice is not about making the world magically conform to our wishes, and it's not about pleasing Jehovah or the ancestors or other arbitary spirits. It is about realizing that just as we need to continue to eat well and excercise, we also need to continue to cultivate a certain mental, emotional and spiritual hygiene. Would you walk out of the house without a shower, shave, and clean clothes? Perhaps for a day or two. After that - things start to get pretty nasty for yourself and those around you. So why do we think our brains don't need washing and rinsing as well - and in a good way.

Spiritual practice is to take some quiet time out. It is to take a moment to just let ourselves unwind and just be. It is a time to let go of all our scheming, planning, worrying, and doing and just be in a quiet moment and take a step back out of all that. This stepping back also means having an objective and non-judgemental look at ourselves. This can lead to getting a handle on who we are, and can help us assess our real situation. But that can come later. Just sitting or just chanting is a time to just stop and look. It is to let go for a time all the little pictures and stories we are usually immersed in, and instead find our solid, still, and silent base in the midsts of the big picture of things-as-they-are which supports all that.

Perhaps that is a good argument for silent sitting, and perhaps even for "just chanting." But what about all the invocations, dedication, prayers, vows, repentences, and sutra recitations? That is not taking a time out to do nothing and just be quiet and non-judgementally observe, so what is it all about? Isn't that all lip service or magical incantation (with a devotional gloss)? I don't think so. I think it is an important support for the practice of just chanting/sitting. It is the setting for the jewel of the central practice. And the purpose of this setting is to allow us to raise our aspirations again, to remind ourselves that we can and are starting afresh despite past failings, to remind ourselves that we are part of a bigger picture (in this case imaginatively invoked through the symbols that speak best to us), to engage that bigger picture and intentionally entering into it, and to dedicate ourselves to carrying out that vision as best we can into the world of everyday cares and concerns and activity.

Yes, this is about aspiration, consciousness raising, dedication, and other such things. Skills that should have been learned in adolescence/young adulthood. And yet, skills that should not have been left behind or neglected. Like eating right and excercising, these are skills that should continue to be cultivated as best we can. And we should challenge ourselves to do so - but at the same time not in a harsh and punitive way either. I should also say that these skills are more important than eating right and excercising because you can be fit and trim and still be a cold, heartless person with no conscience and no sense of meaning in life. It would be better to be unfit and die early but to have a sense that life was meaningful, to have fewer instead of more regrets, and to know that life was wondrously gratuitous; rather than to live long and die full of regret and wondering what the point of any of it was. We should practice every day, and in a sense every moment by being mindful of these so-called "higher things", so that in that culminating moment of our death we will have the sense of wrapping up a life well-lived. What is beyond that will take care of itself just as each moment here does.

I did not intend to write any of this - it all just came to me in a rush when I started to respond to the question at hand. I hope it made sense.

Namu Myoho Renge Kyo,
Ryuei

Posted by Ryuei at May 30, 2006 12:09 PM