 |
|
 |
Taking Responsibility Robert Aitken Roshi page 2 What is the antecedent of the pronoun “he?” It could be “she,” of course, depending on who is asking. The Mahayana rises with this question. He or she is already embodied, of course, embodied but not acknowledged. It is only when he or she is acknowledged, once and for all, that the Dharma can manifest. It is only as he or she under-stands that the Chan Buddha Dharma can manifest. Some of the contemporaries of Baizhang simply occupied wings in esoteric or Tiantai monasteries. According to tradition, it was Baizhang who formulated the first monastic code for the independent Chan monastery, the code that still under-girds the rules and regulations of Zen monastic living. When Baizhang was in his eighties his monks felt that he should rest, and not turn out with the others at samu time. They hid his garden tools, and this gave him a chance to deliver himself of his most famous dictum. At the next meal he locked himself in and refused his food, saying, “A day without work is a day without eating.” This led to the expression in connection with samu,: “all invited.” Everybody turns out. Taking Responsibility This puts responsibility for the Dharma on each individual student, where it belongs. It has taken millennia of process and more to bring this change into being, and the end is by no means yet. The process is laicization. I remember thirty or so years ago when I visited the Zen sanghas of Los Angeles and San Francisco. In question periods I would be asked about lay practice. This was a bit like asking a fish how it is there in the sea. The question simply never came up in the exclusively lay Diamond Sangha. It was, however, entirely natural in the SFZC and the ZCLA where there were dual tracks of training, lay and clerical. The lay track was inferior to that of the clerical, and at the same time the upward path sometimes excluded realization. I remember the modest expostulation of a new director of the San Francisco sangha that she had not had a glimpse of the Great Matter. That is, she had not a glimpse of what the Buddha saw, sitting there under the Bodhi Tree long ago. All of the Mahayana has evolved from that glimpse, the emptiness of everything, the inclusion of everything in each being, and the precious nature of each being in itself—all a closed book to the new executive whose successes rested on her being a really nice person with administrative skills that were sharply honed through a lifetime of experience of interaction in the sangha. I run the risk of another kind of conceit here. While it is important that our Mahasangha be salted with realized people, there are some who see the point of jokes of Hakuin and Dogen, who at the same time don’t feel comfortable in a rope-bottom chair as teachers. These are the luminaries to whom the Dalai Lama, for example, turns in his dilemmas. Fulfillment in the Dharma does not require a certain social position. Furthermore it is important not to be caught up in false tradition. Tracing our history back through the Far East, it is clear that we inherit the presumption that students of the Dharma do not involve themselves in political action. I am convinced that this is a kind of hold-over like sexism that is not essential to the Dharma. The movement of the Mahayana clearly has enabled us to touch the Iraq and the Darfur in ourselves and me, and a concern for those parts of ourselves surely is shared in the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. It behooves us to keep up with our reading of Robert Fisk and Antonia Juhasz and to speak out and act out accordingly. The folks who feel they must continue to search for connections should do just that, but it is in reading and in conversation with friends and teacher that such searches are fulfilled. These undecideds must recognize that they will water down the function if they insist that the Buddhist Peace Fellowship slow up and serve as a means for their search. Our process is slow and equivocal enough as it is. Just as the United States is still seeking to live up to the proclamations of Abraham Lincoln, so Mahayana Buddhism and its followers still seek to live up to the visualizations of Eighth Century Buddhist genius, which really rest on the Buddha’s own proclamations. The ancient vows taken for us are no more than profound common sense. The fact that Iraqis are my sisters and brothers doesn’t need to be swathed in saffron robes. The Buddhist Peace Fellowship is our vehicle, just as the other various modes of Buddhism are vehicles. Let’s use it as a vehicle for the most common sense we can conjure up. Our model can be the Dukabors, who burn down their houses and parade stark naked by way of making their commonsensical human points. Don’t dismiss them as Dukabors. They are brothers and sisters, bare dicks and tits and all. They are their own vehicle and can teach us something.
|
||
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
 |