Dharma Gates, Part 1
Table of contents
- 1. Notes
The theme for today is Dharma Gates
and the "power of the small".
In the Buddhist tradition, there's a principle
expressed as the third boddhisattva vow:
Dharma gates are boundless - I vow to enter them
This means that the grounds for practice -
however you understand that term -
about learning, growth, living well -
about service -
or whatever you are up to -
the grounds are everywhere, in anything
No matter how small, how "ordinary", how familiar.
This insight is expressed by teachers, writers and poets
in eastern and western cultural traditions.
Pema Chodron emphasizes the importance
of seeing everyday life as the grounds for practice:
The key is to be here,
fully connected with the moment,
paying attention to the details of ordinary life.
Goethe wrote:
Every object,
well contemplated
creates a new object of perception in us.
We don't have to
understand abstract ideas,
think big
have a peak experience
"go" anywhere,
escape or "transcend" anything:
We stick with things as they are
and ourselves as we are
and see what happens
when they are brought back together
from their strange, but familiar, separation.
There are many expressions of this idea
in traditions eastern and western.
But since it is about the ordinary
let's look for it there!
What is the most familiar and ordinary thing about every experience?
It's almost too familar to see.
The most commonplace facet of every experience
is "me" or "I".
But that's hard to grasp
the I / eye can't see itself without a mirror.
The self knows itself
in its mixing and embrace with the world.
For something to be a Dharma Gate,
it means to have developed a relationship with it,
and with yourself in relationship to it,
in the sense of "self remembering".
Who am I in relationship to this?
Let's take some time
to personalize this inquiry.
What in your life is already
an open Dharma Gate?
Something you do, continue to learn from and develop
or continue to receive something that "opens" you and it?
What might be a Dharma Gate for you
that is currently closed
but may "guard" important lessons?
A certain trouble, a certain suffering,
or a success or pleasure
that is too fixed.
What object or circumstance
seems too "ordinary" to be a Dharma Gate?
Do you think it possible
that everything you do could be a Gate
currently open, or closed?
What determines whether a Dharma Gate
is open or closed?
Contemplation means
opening oneself to being changed
and also
being active in our way of "being-with":
A quality of attention
of participation,
of relating,
of mutual blessing,
touching and being touched by what happens.
Goethe's "organ of perception"
isn't an intellectual insight
it's really a relationship
that develops slowly and invisibly over time.
When the Gate is open
do we bless the things
or do they bless us?
The answer is "yes".
Notes
Goethe wrote:
“Man knows himself
only to the extent that he knows the world;
he becomes aware of himself
only within the world,
and aware of the world
only within himself.
Every new object,
well contemplated,
opens up a new organ of perception in us.”
Pema Chodron, in a book called, fittingly, The Wisdom of No Escape
speaks about
trusting the basic goodness
of what we have and who we are,
and of realizing that any wisdom that exists,
exists in what we have already.
We can lead our life
so as to become more awake
to who we are and what we’re doing
rather than trying to improve or change
or get rid of who we are or what we’re doing.
In another session she says:
We can learn to rejoice
in even the smallest blessings our life holds.
It is easy to miss our own good fortune;
often happiness comes in ways we don't even notice.
The ordinariness of our good fortune can make it hard to catch.
The key is to be here,
fully connected with the moment,
paying attention to the details of ordinary life.
By taking care of ordinary things -
our pots and pans, our clothing, our teeth -
we rejoice in them.
When we scrub a vegetable
or brush our hair,
we are expressing appreciation:
friendships toward ourselves
and toward the living quality
that is found in everything.
Ralph Waldo Emerson seemed to understand this also (around 1850)
"The poet’s habit of living
should be set on a key so low
that the common influences should delight him.
His cheerfulness should be the gift of the sunlight;
the air should suffice for his inspiration,
and he should be tipsy with water."
The contemporary poet David Whyte has a poem Everything is Waiting For You
You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Emerson says a bit more about the choice of taking this relatioship to things:
"It is a secret
which every intellectual man quickly learns, that:
beyond the energy of his possessed and conscious intellect
he is capable of a new energy...
by abandonment to the nature of things;
that beside his privacy of power
as an individual man,
there is a great public power
on which he can draw,
by unlocking, at all risks, his human doors,
and suffering the ethereal tides
to roll and circulate through him;
then he is caught up into the life of the Universe"
The surrealist poet Andre Breton also speaks about this, in a poem Choose Life (1923, excerpt):
Choose life instead of those prisms with no depth even if their colors are purer
Instead of this hour always hidden
Choose this heart with its safety catch
Instead of that murmuring pool
Choose life with its conspiratorial sheets
Its scars from escapes
The life of being here nothing but being here
Where one voice says Are you there where another answers Are you there
I'm hardly here at all alas
Choose life with its waiting rooms
When you know you'll never be shown in
Choose life unfavorable and long
With that head beautiful enough
Like the antidote to that perfection it summons and it fears
And since everything's already been said
Choose life instead
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