"Service" means different things to different people at different times. We may not know it, but we are all obliged to serve in some way throughout our lives, sometimes willingly, often not. The "Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi" is one many Buddhist teachings that prepare and enable the service expected of Chan/Zen Dharma participants -- whether priests, monks or laypeople.
As I say, I absorbed the teaching about 50 years ago in San Francisco. It was part of a range of Buddhist texts I had accumulated over the previous 10 years or so of practice. I can't say I know where it came from. I don't. And I can't say I was a particular scholar of Zen or Buddhism at the time -- nor am I particularly so now. Buddhist scholarship and commentary is quite a specialty these days, there is massive amounts of it produced over the last 2,500 years, much of it recently. I'm not sure that much of it has helped me more than the teachings and texts themselves, but because it is produced in such prodigious quantity, it must be helping someone.
Perhaps the primary Buddhist teaching text I absorbed back then was "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (156 pg pdf), which presented Zen and Buddhism in such a gentle, kind, simple and straightforward way that it seemed "easily" graspable despite the complexity and often opaqueness of most of the commentary.
"The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi" is not commentary. It consists of admonitions, memory-joggers, reminders, and guideposts originally primarily intended for recipients of Dharma Transmission. In other words, it's not really a text for the lay practitioners not receiving Dharma Transmission, yet it has become a routine chant repeated by all at Zen Centers throughout the world (maybe not so much in Japan, though?) and I question the merit of that, simply because the references within it are pretty much opaque without the background training, study and practice that the song is "about."
In other words, if one simply chants it without the background for comprehension, what merit is there?
I've heard tell that even if you don't understand all the many references within it, that's fine. By repeating it in chant, you are automatically building up merit and understanding... "absorbing it" as it were. Much, perhaps, as I did decades ago. I did not, never have, and probably never will chant it, but by absorption, it became part of me and over time has strongly influenced the course of my life.
Go figure. That seems to be the point of chanting it, too.
When you become "awakened" in the Buddhist sense -- that is able to recognize and (sort of) experience the vastness of the Emptiness within which our material existence arises and returns -- the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, even without knowledge of all the many references it contains, becomes crystal clear. No mystery or struggle to it at all. Like so much else, it is self-evident. Suchness (which I doubt I'll get into in this post, but we'll see.)
"Awakening" in the Mahayana Buddhist sense compels service. Which is the point, you might say, of the Jewel Mirror, Dharma Transmission, and of living.
One has a role to play and a job to do. An overriding purpose. From which there is no escape so long as your being is contained in your body. And even then....
I mentioned in one of the seminars during the practice period that I had absorbed the Jewel Mirror Samadhi many years ago and it was part of the process of transforming my life from one of intense selfishness (ie: survival selfishness) to one of constant service. It was, I believe, automatic. There was no conscious determination to come to service. It's just what happened.
"Service" takes many, many forms. Bodhicitta is a way of referring to the Awakening that leads to service as a Bodhisattva -- someone on the way to Buddhahood who stays in the material world to serve others and their Awakening. There is no end of what you may do in service to others, and one of the keys I learned about through trial and error really more than anything else, is to wait and listen and be available when asked. Don't force yourself in service to others. The opportunities arise spontaneously.
It helps immeasurably to recognize that as a material being you are imperfect as can be, and you will make many, many mistakes and missteps, and you will fail again and again. And yet... And yet...
You must carry on.
The Jewel Mirror Samadhi says that once you have received the Dharma (the Teachings as well as the recognition of Suchness) you are to "keep it well," and you are to serve. Quietly. Not ostentatiously or forcefully but modestly and openly. As a "fool with no voice" as one translation has it. Just this.
So as I'm coming on to a year of participation among the sangha-beings of this Zen Center, many questions I might have had were I pursuing intellectual knowledge or a monastic future have been more than adequately answered. I didn't have those questions, but oh well!😉
In fact, once on the Bodhisattva path, questions mostly cease except to the extent they get asked as part of service to others.
I don't claim to be a Bodhisattva -- far from it -- but I see no end to the service I am compelled to provide, both materially and to some extent spiritually.
And I've come to recognize all this is related to karma and karmic debt. "All my ancient twisted karma..." indeed.
So much struggle. So deep. So wide.
🙏
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