Working to See More Clearly

"Take up the way of meeting others on equal ground." --Buddhist precept as discussed by Diane Rizzetto in her book, Waking Up to What You Do.

In her book, Waking Up to What You Do, Abbess Diane Rizzetto writes on the precept of meeting others on equal ground. She quotes the writer Dag Hammarskjold, Markings: 

"To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in

its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, 

than any thing else in the universe. It is nothing; at the same time, 

one with the universe." 

What are the obvious and not so obvious ways that we regard ourselves in light of others? Do we gain self-worth in measuring ourselves against others? Do we consider our own thoughts, our own way? Do we praise ourselves at the expense of others? Or while not praising ourselves, abuse others?

What keeps us from meeting others, from meeting the stranger on equal ground? What about competition--are there winners and losers in the world? How does anger, insecurity, fear, shame and blame block the way of meeting others on equal ground? 

Why must we meet equally? Despite our sometimes fearful and anxious experiences of meeting others with pounding heart and cold hand, adrenaline flowing making us feel like ice, meeting others on equal ground is important.

Even so, there are many ways we either subtly or overtly avoid our feelings and perceptions of unease with ourselves; we measure, we criticize, blame and shame our way through life. Putting others down will pull us up, it seems--maybe. By learning more about the reality of inter-being we come to find that this isn't so.

 Making you dirty, makes me dirty; disrespect to you is disrespect to myself. I am the doing, the making of it all, the dream of self. Considering this perception, we find it isn't limited to speech. Behavior is also a means of competition and measuring ourselves to others.

We may ignore, exclude or avoid others in our activities with the intention to demonstrate a perception of superiority. Sometimes we even think we are more sophisticated, more enlightened than the others. 

In history we learn that the Buddha was enlightened in a simple way, under a tree, no posh hotel or vacation spot for him. The Christ was hung ultimately on a cross, no limousine or finely dressed mourners at his death. 

Gandhi was shot to death, there were no bowing supplicants before him; rather, it was the end of a gun. So too for Martin Luther King. 

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta had no exemplary education beyond courage and will. These figures are burned into our consciousness; they were both humble and great, simple and wise.

Do not admire them; be more like them. Diane Rizzetto writes, "When we speak or act in these [other] ways, clarity, discovery and true dialog [understanding] are lost. 

Even if we don't consciously place ourselves above others...if we're in the game of competition by watching our reactions when we make a mistake... Do we blame... find excuses... jump in defense?"   
Do we say what it is; that is, do we say, "I forgot, I lost it, I didn't understand?" In being humble, speaking truthfully, we are neither better nor worse.

However, when our focus is to maintain ourselves in a perception of better than others, above them, then we close ourselves, we cut ourselves off; separation from the world and others occurs. We then choose to live in division. 

There is now just the dream, that dream of self. Working to see more clearly, vispayana, the ways we judge others, and the ways we place so much of our energy in covering up ourselves due to fear, anxiety, shame-- the same energy is always available to help us to see more clearly and compassionately our own, true selves. Neither better nor worse than others. 

"Whether we place ourselves above or below others, we are substituting an idea about who we are, or who others are, or should be for the simple truth that as human beings we are good at some things and not so good at other things. We fail and succeed; we know and we don't know; we accomplish some useful things in our day, and we mess up some other things. This is what it means to be human..." to be humble, to be neither better nor worse, to be oneself." paraphrased

"Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between contradictions... for the god wants to know himself in you."
-- Poet Maria Rilke

Garbage and Roses

"What is real remains."

A principle text of Buddhism, the Prajnaparamita "Heart" Sutra, perhaps the principle text for all practitioners on the way is also called "the Heart of Understanding." This text is central to many and universal in its wisdom. It traces its roots within the Buddhist Canon back 2,000 or more years. Surely other traditions at that time had some access to it, and other like teachings.
Technology may have changed over that time, but the Heart, or Perfect Understanding Sutra in its reflection of human nature and practice has not. Despite the passage of time, it remains a reality.

For me a student of the Way, and a learner of the teaching, I have used other study texts to understand and learn more; however, the best one I have used whether in Zendo or on my own, is the 1988 translation and commentaries written by Buddhist monk and teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding.
 It is written with emphasis to make the teaching more accessible to the Western mind. By writing the commentary on Garbage and Roses, he seeks to further our understanding of emptiness. "To be empty does not mean nonexistence... Emptiness is the ground of everything... if I am not empty, I cannot be here [in this moment] writes the philosopher, Nagarjuna... Empty is quite a positive concept... because you are there, I can be here."

"Neither defiled nor immaculate"

"Defiled or immaculate. Dirty or pure. These are concepts we form in our minds... A beautiful rose is pure, immaculate." A garbage can is dirty, evil, rotten. These are experiences that may fill our mind with the idea of the word.
Looking more carefully, more deeply, you will see that the rose is born out of the garbage. The garbage is composted, and forms the base of humus for the soil that the rose needs to survive. Organic gardeners know that in a few months, plant matter, and natural things, decay into compost. Thus roses and garbage inter-be.
They need each other! Likewise, the Buddhist teaching of the human Genesis is very short and simple, yet it is very deep:

This is, because that is. This is not, because that is not. This is like this, because that is like that.

Meditate a while upon this and you will see more clearly the inter-being of things. Sometimes, we in our lives, are like that because this is like that. We all inter-be. So, "we must be very careful. We should not imprison ourselves in concepts. We can only inter-be. We cannot just be." Only through the eyes of inter-being can we be freed of suffering, can we find forgiveness and blessings.

For example, many of us want to "be good." But we forget that part of good is evil. For without evil, what then is the good? "You cannot be good alone,' Thich Nhat Hanh states, 'you cannot hope to remove evil, because thanks to evil, good exists and vice versa...
So Buddha needs Mara to take the evil role so Buddha can be a Buddha. Buddha is empty; Buddha is made of non-Buddha elements... Buddha needs Mara in order to reveal himself... When you perceive reality in this way, you will not discriminate against the garbage for the sake of the rose."

Saint Paul needed Saint Matthew to become Saint Paul, who himself initially was a vicious persecutor of Christians, yet through a vision, and contacts with the disciples, with Saint Matthew the Evangelist, Paul (Saul) became transformed into one of the early Fathers of the Christian Church. Without Saint Matthew and others to open his eyes, like Mara and Buddha, he would not be Saint Paul of the Bible.
 Clearly that is because this is; it is the work of inter-being that we may look deeply to perceive that. The Feast of Saint Paul is June 29 in the Roman Church Calendar.

"So do not hope that you can eliminate the evil side. It is easy to think that we are on the good side, and that the other side is evil. But wealth is made of poverty, and poverty is made of wealth." And if we look very carefully into the world, into ourselves, we may see that we suffer, we bear the pains of all.

Precept: On Level Ground, Neither Better Nor Worse*

"Take up the way of meeting others on equal ground." --Buddhist precept as discussed by Diane Rizzetto in her book, Waking Up to What You Do.

In her book, Waking Up to What You Do, Abbess Diane Rizzetto writes on the precept of meeting others on equal ground. She quotes the writer Dag Hammarskjold, Markings: 

"To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in

its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, 

than any thing else in the universe. It is nothing; at the same time, 

one with the universe." 

What are the obvious and not so obvious ways that we regard ourselves in light of others? Do we gain self-worth in measuring ourselves against others? Do we consider our own thoughts, our own way? Do we praise ourselves at the expense of others? Or while not praising ourselves, abuse others?

What keeps us from meeting others, from meeting the stranger on equal ground? What about competition--are there winners and losers in the world? How does anger, insecurity, fear, shame and blame block the way of meeting others on equal ground? 

Why must we meet equally? Despite our sometimes fearful and anxious experiences of meeting others with pounding heart and cold hand, adrenaline flowing, making us feel like ice, meeting others on equal ground is important.

Even so, there are many ways we either subtly or overtly avoid our feelings and perceptions of unease with ourselves; we measure, we criticize, blame and shame our way through life.
 Putting others down will pull us up, it seems--maybe. By learning more about the reality of inter-being we come to find that this isn't so.

 Making you dirty, makes me dirty; disrespect to you is disrespect to myself. I am the doing, the making of it all, the dream of self. Considering this perception, we find it isn't limited to speech. Behavior is also a means of competition and measuring ourselves to others.

We may ignore, exclude or avoid others in our activities with the intention to demonstrate a perception of superiority. Sometimes we even think we are more sophisticated, more enlightened than the others. 

In history we learn that the Buddha was enlightened in a simple way, under a tree, no posh hotel or vacation spot for him. The Christ was hung ultimately on a cross, no limousine or finely dressed mourners at his death. 

Gandhi was shot to death, there were no bowing supplicants before him; rather it was the end of a gun. So too for Martin Luther King. 

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta had no exemplary education beyond courage and will. These figures are burned into our consciousness; they were both humble and great, simple and wise.

Do not admire them; be more like them. Diane Rizzetto writes, "When we speak or act in these [other] ways, clarity, discovery and true dialog [understanding] are lost. 

Even if we don't consciously place ourselves above others...if we're in the game of competition by watching our reactions when we make a mistake... Do we blame... find excuses... jump in defense?" Do we say what it is; that is, do we say, "I forgot, I lost it, I didn't understand?" In being humble, speaking truthfully, we are neither better nor worse.

However, when our focus is to maintain ourselves in a perception of better than others, above them, then we close ourselves, we cut ourselves off. And a separation from the world and others occurs. We then choose to live in division. 

There is now just the dream, that dream of self. Working to see more clearly, vispayana, the ways we judge others, and the ways we place so much of our energy in covering up ourselves due to fear, anxiety, shame-- the same energy is always available to help us to see more clearly and compassionately our own, true selves. Neither better nor worse than others. 

"Whether we place ourselves above or below others, we are substituting an idea about who we are, or who others are, or should be for the simple truth that as human beings we are good at some things and not so good at other things. We fail and succeed; we know and we don't know; we accomplish some useful things in our day, and we mess up some other things. This is what it means to be human..." to be humble, to be neither better nor worse, to be oneself." paraphrased

"Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between contradictions...for the god wants to know himself in you."

-- Poet Maria Rilke

*The Simple Mind is away from the computer. This article ran here previously, on March 23, 2009.

On Equal Ground

I take up the way of meeting others on equal ground. --Buddhist precept as discussed by Diane Rizzetto in her book, Waking Up to What You Do.


In her book, Waking Up to What You Do, Abbess Diane Rizzetto writes on the precept of meeting others on equal ground. She quotes the writer Dag Hammarskjold, Markings:

"To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than any thing else in the universe. It is nothing;at the same time, one with the universe."

What are the obvious and not so obvious ways that we regard ourselves in light of others? Do we gain self-worth in measuring ourselves against others? Do we consider our own thoughts, our own way? Do we praise ourselves at the expense of others? Or while not praising ourselves, abuse others? What keeps us from meeting others, from meeting the stranger on equal ground? What about competition--are there winners and losers in the world? How does anger, insecurity, fear, shame and blame block the way of meeting others on equal ground? Why must we meet equally?

Despite our sometimes fearful and anxious experiences of meeting others with pounding heart and cold hand, with adrenaline flowing, making us feel like ice, meeting others on equal ground is important. Even so, there are many ways we either subtly or overtly avoid our feelings and perceptions of unease with ourselves; we measure, we criticize, blame and shame our way through life. Putting others down will pull us up, it seems.
By learning more about the reality of inter-being we come to find that this isn't so. Making you dirty, makes me dirty; disrespect to you is disrespect to myself. I am the doing, the making of it all, the dream of self.

Considering this perception, we find it isn't limited to speech. Behavior is also a means of competition and measuring ourselves to others. We may ignore, exclude or avoid others in our activities with the intention to demonstrate a perception of superiority. Sometimes we even think we are more sophisticated, more enlightened than the others.

In history we learn that the Buddha was enlightened in a simple way, under a tree, no posh hotel or vacation spot for him. The Christ was hung ultimately on a cross, no limousine or finely dressed mourners at his death.
Gandhi was shot to death, there were no bowing supplicants before him; rather it was the end of a gun. So too for Martin Luther King.
Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta had no exemplary education beyond courage and will. These figures are burned into our consciousness; they were both humble and great, simple and wise.
Do not admire them; be more like them.

Diane Rizzetto writes, "When we speak or act in this way, clarity, discovery and true dialog [understanding] are lost. Even if we don't consciously place ourselves above others...if we're in the game of competition by watching our reactions when we make a mistake... Do we blame... find excuses... jump in defense?"

Do we say what it is, that is, do we say, "I forgot, I lost it, I didn't understand?"
In being humble, speaking truthfully, we are neither better nor worse. However, when our focus is to maintain ourselves in a perception as better than others, above them, then we close ourselves, we cut ourselves off and separation from the world and others occurs. We then choose to live in division. There now is just the dream, that dream of self.

Working to see more clearly, vispayana, the ways we judge others, and the ways we place so much of our energy in covering up ourselves due to fear, anxiety, shame-- the same energy is always available to help us to see more clearly and compassionately our own true selves.

Neither better nor worse than others. "Whether we place ourselves above or below others, we are substituting an idea about who we are, or who others are, or should be for the simple truth that as human beings we are good at some things and not so good at other things. We fail and succeed; we know and we don't know; we accomplish some useful things in our day, and we mess up some other things. This is what it means to be human..." to be humble, to be neither better nor worse, to be oneself."

Take your practiced powers and stretch them out until they span the chasm between contradictions...for the god wants to know himself in you.--Maria Rilke

The Basis of Oneness

"feel your lightness and let it merge with others..."
--Tao Te Ching
"Many poets are not poets... they never succeed in being themselves."
--Thomas Merton
"I am the will, the heart, the soul, the spirit, the self, the I..."
--Peter Kreeft


Ways of seeing, vispayana, are many and yet they are few: some spiritual traditions are unique, and yet they are universal:

"If you know what it is, don't talk it away:
If you don't then you don't understand.

Hush, keep it in, and your doorway shut--
Steer clear of sharpness and untangle the knots.

Feel your lightness and let it merge with others,
This we say is our basis of oneness.

The sage who does this doesn't have to worry
about people called 'friends' or 'enemies,'
with profit or loss, honor or disgrace--

He is a Master of Life, instead."
--Tao Te Ching, chapter 56, translated by Man-Ho Kwok

"I have three priceless treasures:
The first is compassion
the second, thrift
And the third is that I never want to be ahead of you.

If I have compassion, you will die for me. I know that.
If I waste nothing, I can give myself to you all--
And if I don't seem perfect, then you'll trust me to lead you.

These days people scorn compassion. They try to be tough.
They spend all they have, and yet want to be generous
They despise humility, and want to be the best.

I tell you that way is Death's.

If you have loved your people, you will know it
they will fight tooth and nail for you in attack or defense.

This is the protection of Heaven, and your harvest.
--Tao Te Ching, chapter 67, translated by Man-Ho Kwok


Thomas Merton, Integrity

"Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints: they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or particular saint they are intended to be by [gifts of] God... They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody elses' experiences, or write somebody else's poems, or possess somebody else's spirituality... There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular-- and too lazy to think of anything better... Hurry ruins saints as well as artists... In great saints you find that perfect humility and perfect integrity coincide. The two turn out to be practically the same thing. The saint is unlike everybody else precisely because he is humble... since no two people are alike, if you have the humility to be yourself, you will not be like anyone else in the whole universe... Individuality is something deep in the soul... humility brings with it a deep refinement of spirit, a peacefulness, a tact and common sense, without which there is no sane morality...How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city?

--Thomas Merton, Trappist monk from his book, The New Seeds of Contemplation

Peter Kreeft, The Most Important Thing

"Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man." Matthew 15:11

"This is true not only of the mouth or the body, but also the soul. What comes into my soul is not necessarily what I will, but what comes out of my soul is precisely what I will. The Greek philosophers did not clearly recognize this personal center. They were intellectualists; they thought the deepest thing in us was the mind. Thus Plato taught that whenever we really know the good, we do it... Aristotle defined man as a rational animal." When asked about his teachings, Jesus replied, "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If any man's will is to do this [the Father's] will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God." John 7, verses 16,17

"The will leads us to wisdom... Know thyself, was the first and greatest command for the Greeks. It was inscribed upon every Temple of Apollo... To answer that fundamental question: What is the self? What am I? What is the human person? The key of love unlocks the deepest answer...

--Peter Kreeft, The God Who Loves You
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