Today is the 21st of February 2023. And we're going to be talking a little bit about working with change and loss. And this subject was was prompted by the the, the storms and the aftermath of the three big storms we've had in the North Island.
I was searching around for teaching on floods within the Dharma, Zen Dharma. I remembered that there was something in this autobiographical account of the life of Master Sheng Yen called "Footprints in the Snow." So we're just going to start with reading little sections of his book where he talks about flooding. This comes from the beginning of the first chapter.
He says I was born near Shaoniang Harbor, just west of where the Yangtze River empties into the East China Sea. I have no memory of the place because a few minutes after I came into the world, a few months after I came into the world, a flood washed everything away - not just our home, but our fields too - everything we owned ended up in the middle of the river. After the flood, we went to stay with relatives near Nan Tong. Then we moved further up river about 150 kilometers from the sea, to a district called Chang Ying Shah, directly across from Nan Tom's harbor. We lived in a three bedroom, three room thatched hut, that my father put up on the acre on an acre of rented farmland.
He goes on after this to describe their family, the family's hard life, doing subsistence farming hard but mostly, he says heavy. But then, to about seven years after they had moved to this new location, he recounts how he saw for himself what a flood can do. He says, although it didn't, feet, his family directly because they were now further away from the river. They traveled to the area where we're which was affected and he was, he was deeply marked by what he saw. He says I remember that it rained for over a month, the typhoons came and came and cane. The wind rose and rose and kept blowing. The rain was dense and lashing. It would storm for days, the sky would lighten briefly, and then the rains will begin again. Waves of rain soaking everything. After the first week or so the young sea started to rise. It started pulling in the land on its banks, sucking the land into itself, getting fatter and fatter, faster and faster. gobbling up soil and trees. It swells so much that it broke through the dikes into the fields. He talked earlier about needing a man to bicycle the pumps that drew the water into the farmland. But he says that now they need to know no bicycle man to irrigate. The fields with he says our fields were full of fish. When the typhoons finally stopped and the wind wind down, why wind died down. My father took me to see how my second sister's family had fared. Although the flood had spared their house, the land was outside the dike and had disappeared. It in places that were the water had begun to recede all that was left of the other houses with thatched roofs. Debris floated in the water, have stabbed dogs and cats clung to flotsam. and human corpses bobbed in the waves. Their clothes had been ripped off and they had begun to bloat and rot
we think we think of land, soil as being something solid. And yet here we have cases mentioned by him of the land being swallowed up by the river. And we have many many examples in our floods of people who have not just lost their homes but whose land has has slipped away was in threat of slipping away so he's experiencing is the roughly is about a seven year old. The male corpse has floated facedown their bodies arch like bows, with only their backs visible above the water. I thought this was because their stomachs headless fed, but I never found out why. Most of the female corpses floated face up their hands, the heads were belt bent back there here was found and their feet hung down, but below the surface, they also formed bows, but in the opposite direction. The Children's corpses were like bloated, blown fish, swollen and puffed up with sickly white bellies and leprous gray backs. Gex scavenge the ice scavenge the eyeballs. The rain had stopped, the sun beat down and waves of stench drifted off the river. It was such an awful experience. Over the next few weeks, I kept waking up in the middle of a night and terror. the fragility of life is frightening, not only to adults, but to children to the destruction I witnessed was like what Shakyamuni Buddha realized upon enlightenment, that this world is fragile and constantly in danger. The cycle of birth and death is like an ocean of suffering. At that time, I had absolutely no religious beliefs. But standing over the fitted River, watching the corpses drift by I had a sudden realization that any of us can die at any time. I knew that if I had lived in that area, we would have died to seeing so many corpses, the impermanence of life was driven home to me. Yet I felt that it was very good thing to be alive. In the midst of all that terror, it was not fear that I felt that that life is good, and that we should cherish it. In the weeks to come, the horror of the corpses faded and was replaced by a kind of acceptance. At a young age. I knew that when death comes there's nothing we can do we have to accept it. I have seen much death in my lifetime for famine, disease, I am at the end of my life. Now, one day soon I will die. The lesson of the flood is still with me. And I know there is no use worrying about death. The important thing is to fully live until the moment when it comes.
What struck me in particular in this book were the two quotations that master Sheng yen chose to put as a as a kind of preface to the text. And then once the various ones just align, they appear to be at odds with each other. And in some sense, they reflect what Master Sheng yen realized when he he saw the death and destruction after the after this flood this terrible flood. He realized he says that he there was no use worrying about death. And that the important thing was to live fully until the moment when it comes. And here's his here's his first quotation as bris prefacing the whole book What is there to worry about in life, just follow the causes and conditions. days and months go by like waves, time passes, like fire in the stone What is there to worry about life? Perhaps we could re stated and say in what way is it helpful to worry.
To be to be truly a priest to be truly free of worry, probably takes a fairly good, deep insight into emptiness, that emptiness of everything, including ourselves, that we all are processes in flux insubstantial. There's a famous verse from a master scholar around goes around the 400 ad was he when he loved he was he was about to be executed. And he's in this is what he said. Reportedly as as the moment before he died, the four elements essentially have no master the five shadows are fundamentally empty, the naked sword will sever my head, as though cutting the spring breeze. The naked sword will sever my head as though cutting the spring breeze
What is there to worry about in life if we to some degree, how much we worry is is to do with our temperament.
Faith in the teachings faith in the Dharma can also be another another cause of less worry if we really, really even if we haven't had strong insight even still have faith in the teaching of emptiness and of impermanence and faith comes from it from experience
what is there to worry about in life just follow the causes and conditions this could be an invitation to just die when death comes she was talking about her Yeah. We can also understand it in other ways
and it can be understood in a straightforward manner just respond as needed. Whatever the conditions are
there's a whole range of different kinds of of loss and change that people have experienced in the floods from minor damage to losing one's whole home and everything in it losing one's livelihood land the land on which we built his to have gone you see that the land is much less solid than we thought and the end the ultimate to lose someone we love or to die ourselves. All of these have happened over these last weeks
I was speaking to a member who lives in in Napier and he was saying that it's really been quite wonderful since the disaster because of the way in which neighbors are helping each other chicken checking up on each other. gave an example of builders coming in to help with get the repair started ripping out damage job. Just Just working to help. People driving down down to the neighborhood bringing food and other necessities. Here's it's over responding to causes and conditions. And it's it's it's more eloquent than any words that because could be said to the people who are suffering it's very straightforward, but vital
just follow the causes and conditions. Just follow the causes and conditions not just what is happening, but looking into why something might have happened, what might have caused it. And this takes some some fearlessness and honesty at times.
Mustard Odin said, Those who practice Buddhism must deeply deeply feel the passing nature of things and have faith in karma. Everything has a cause and karma this word karma means cause the teaching is more fully expressed by the terms, Karma The parka, which is cause and effect.
years ago, it must be maybe 10 years ago, read an article by Bill McKibben, the founder of three fifty.org. And he was talking about a flood that had happened in his area in Vermont, which had destroyed a bridge or a culvert near his home. And he was he talked about the disruption that this caused the cost of this, and also the the cost of the repair. And he, he predicted that such destruction would become more frequent, his global temperatures rose. And then over time, it was likely that our ability to fix things to do the work to replace the bridges and the roads and so forth, would become more more difficult with because we would have fewer resources as time went on. And we're seeing this happen now with with the present disasters, that budgets are going to have to be rewritten. And funds that were would have been going to other things will have to go to the repairs. James Shaw gave an impassioned speech in I think in Parliament, where he talked about our come into what he called a period of consequences. This this is actually a quote from Winston Churchill. And there's a little article in the newsroom about about this, this period of consequences and this is by a commentator called Mark dalda. Ended up here about a week ago.
So he goes a little bit of background and takes the takes the the image a little further, he says in 1936 has helped Hitler's Germany geared up for Winston Churchill railed against the comparatively poor state of the British military. He said, The era of procrastination of half middle measures of soothing and baffling expedience of delays is coming to a close in its place where you're entering a period of consequences. And James chose to use the same phrase in parliament on Tuesday. Pointing to the the enormous challenge that these series of storms have created in terms of returning things to how they were before the floods in Auckland were being called the worst climate related disaster in the country. until they were superseded by the the damage done further down the island and the East Coast. Daalder points out that the same quote had been used by Al Gore back in 2006, when in his book An Inconvenient Truth. And then he asked the question, how are we still reaching for the same metaphors to describe the same problem? Why does it feel like so little has changed? In the documentary Gore turns to Churchill, after describing the ways in which climate change will make hurricanes, the Atlantic version of cyclones, more intense, he points to her Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1000 people and turned into the costliest ever tropical storm. There have been warnings that hurricanes would get stronger. They were warnings that this hurricane days before it hit, would breach the levees and cause a pile of kinds of damage that it ultimately did cause. And one question that we as a people need to decide is how do we react when we hear warnings from the leading clients, leading scientists in the world poor said SYPRO glabrous, Gabrielle was not a surprise either. And why we were as prepared as we could be for its landfall, we were not prepared, we are not prepared for the progression of Evermore intense, and even more frequent tropical storms, which will come in its way over the coming years and decades. That we can be honest with our about this, and, and examine ourselves in terms of what we might do as we move forward, how we might respond.
Why I asked you to also ask ourselves, why is it such a difficult thing to change? Dolder suggests that is it's to do with the fact that global overheating, which is causing these storms to become more frequent, and more violent, is a systemic problem, not an individual one. The quote, procrastination, the half measures, the soothing and baffling experience the delays, let's quoting Mr. Churchill, the fault of those with the power to stop the pollution, fossil fuel companies, their corporate clients and politicians who have failed to rein them in. And we could add in here, the the forestry companies. People who are old enough will remember cyclone bowler. And this problem with the with the slash was was obvious in and playing back then, which was 88 I think somewhere around there. These companies are continuing to make record profits, while by knowingly selling us the very thing that makes events like Gabrielle so much more likely and so much more extreme. They knew their products were poisoning the atmosphere as early as 1959. And they lied about it. Now they pretend to support green solutions that lead at the chance to increase production of fossil fuels when the opportunity arises. And actually emissions have gone up then in recent years, rather than gone down
so this is this is
we're in a situation now where we're we're already experiencing the more violent weather because of the the one point whatever degrees temperature rise. But in order to in order to proceed. We also need the light touch that that shinian offers when he says what is there to worry about a life? Well, we might say there's there's plenty to worry about. But it's likely that worry could make us immobile unable to hedge and we need to be able to act wisely. Even if we are in greater trouble now than we were a few years ago, not just create things in the same but to, to find a way of moving forward without panicking and to speak out without blaming, while at the same time holding their feet to the fire of these, these institutional bodies which are how the system plays out when our society
last two lines of of this first two the two quotes by Master Sheng yen book, he says days and months go by like waves, time passes like fire in the stone. His talking here about impermanence, impermanence, impermanence. Dogon says the same, he says deeply feel the passing nature of things, to feel as in our bones, that we are change that we can if there's one thing we can rely on, it's change. Shakyamuni, Buddha portrait, all things composed of parts must fall apart. But this includes, includes painful things, they too must pass, they come, they have a certain life and then they go, this is some weekly, we learn again and again and again through our sitting practice. If it comes, it will also go or at least it will change, it's not solid and said and this really can be the bedrock of our, our faith. That then we can something that we can absolutely rely on. Now we come to the second quote that Pastor Sheng Yen has here, living in this world is like living in a house on fire. Living in this world is like living in a house on fire. This is from the Lotus Sutra and the parable of the burning house. We don't need to go into into the details of this. But we can appreciate this as a symbol of an image of samsaric existence. In the past, in the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha is is depicted as a father of many who children who unhealthful of the danger of living in this burning house and just continue to play with their toys, while they're in danger of being consumed by the searing flames. And this is this is also true of us samsaric existence, it is it is searing, it is can be hellish, even, this this burning house is sodium associated especially with the passions, greed, hatred, ignorance these things which which are the cause of our deepest suffering. So, in in at odds with the first quote, we might see, we could say that this cape is urgent from this place, this place of deep suffering and yet we tend to just continue playing with the toys and this is certainly the case in the in with the way that we respond to the climate crisis most of us and this is this you could say is the danger that we we just fall into acting out of those three poisons was one writer ree phrase them, we demand we defend and we distract. We demand things to be our way. We defend our our patch of what we own and we distract ourselves. So these things are so much embedded in the system and we should that we are selves embedded in I
got used this quote in a, you know Zando talk recently, but it is, is applies here he says check off and on shape of Behind the Door of every contented happy man, there ought to be someone standing with a little hammer and continually reminding him with a knock that there are unhappy people that however happy he may be life will sooner or later show him its claws and trouble will come to him we can you can feel like we've we've been laid off lightly. But as long as as we are in this world we are subject to its claws that's the nature of this existence with that we we live in this burning house and though the the the storms are particularly powerful because they are happening right here or who did happen right here among us, everybody knows somebody who's gone through something in these in these three storms it's not just here, we have climate change is happening all over the world. Probably the most severe are the the long years long droughts in Africa, which are creating hunger for millions of people not just human beings being affected either. One of the things that happened right at the center when we were pumping out the like that unformed in the driveway alongside the Zendo one point an eel came up and was was came up through the sewers, we guess, and was sucked into one of the pumps and stop it working kill the eel. And it just, it just struck me as is so poignant, that that is loving being should be, should be killed by this, this our efforts to to get the water out of the Zendo and I've heard other stories of of animals in the storms, rats having to swim away on on floodwaters. Penguins being washed out of their of their burrows where they were going through the molting process his changes are are having profound effects on so many beings of different species. So, look at these two quotes by the inch in Shane's introduction preface what is there to worry about life just follow the causes and conditions days and months go by lightwaves time pit passes like fire and the stone has image of fire in the stone. Perhaps we can we can heat stones to the red hot, but take them away from the heat and they just returned to a cold stone again. days and months go by like waves. If we if we if this is the case, we know this from sushi and if we fully throw ourselves into our practice into our life, then days and months go by like waves time passes, things change. We can we can rely on that. But at the same time is this living as in this world is like living in a house on fire. There's urgent work to be done. It was your work to change our own minds. So that we can change the system which is is so bankrupt. This is like a you could say a continuum with what is there to worry about a knife at one end and no time to lose no time to waste at the other end, we need to hold these two together, in order to be able to survive, you could say emotionally as we, as we watch what's happening, to put our faith in causes and conditions that things are unfolding, as they need to unfold, given the causes that are in play, we can't argue with it, we have to work with it with the loss, the the the devastation the destruction that's what we have to work with. We have to work with the worries that we might have over how these things are gonna unfold. Does that help we still have to work with it if we are worrying work use it to to inspire or motivate us to look deeply into the nature of things and to find that piece that that enables us to to work with each other effect change.
Wanted to finish off by looking at another kind of creative cheap tension that is to be found the the the koans collections are full of these. And this one relates the whole question of mortality and how we approach death and life in which the core is a part of life. And people will hear me talk about the these these two colons before the one in the Hekiganroku dies with it goes along with everything else among us dies, we win the conflagration at the end of the Calpis seeds sweeps through and the great cosmos is destroyed. I wonder is this one destroyed or not? dies? We said it will be destroyed? The monk said Will it be gone with everything else? Dies Louie said it will be gone with everything else. So this monk is asking the master about death on a grand scale annihilation. When everything when the world ends. Will this one in be destroyed? This one? What's he talking about here? And why does dinosaurs say yes it will be destroyed. The bank isn't isn't happy and asks more will it be gone with it really will it be gone with everything else and dies or he says it will be gone with everything else. And yet And yet in the verse to number 23 in the Mumonkan move on there says you cannot describe it. You cannot picture it. You cannot praise it fully. Stop all you're grasping and maneuvering. There is no way to hide your true self. When the world is annihilate annihilated it remains indestructible. Will it be destroyed or is it indestructible? Are both these true? How can they both be true? We have to examine ourselves look deeply to answer these questions. Answer them existentially by not falling into has or has not just as is. We have to approach the chyron Mu in the same just getting beyond the notion of has and has not just finished with a comment on this koan. Bye tiene que Japanese Soto master he says the underlying meaning is that the fire that consumes the universe at the end of the Eon, the kalpa is already upon you or so everyone should urgently make a thorough investigation. If you waste time hanging around, you'll lose your life. We'll stop here and recite the four vows.
All beings without number to liberate endless blind passion sign to operate.
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