INSIGHTAotearoa
A newsletter for New Zealand's insight meditation practitioners and communities
kanya @ insightaotearoa.org | http://www.insightaotearoa.org
Monday 14 June 2010
Kia ora,
In this newsletter you’ll find…
EDITORIAL: New Light for a New Year
REFLECTION: from ‘The Light Within the Dark’, by John Tarrant
QUOTE: The Buddha
STORY: It isn’t easy being enlightened – a conversation between the Buddha and Mara
POEM: Czselaw Milosz
WISE WORDS: Rumi & Dogen
CULTIVATING THE DHARMA GARDEN: New Light in the Dharma Garden
QUOTE: Joseph Goldstein
THANKS: to INSIGHT Aotearoa supporters
THEMES: for upcoming issues
SANGHA NEWS: A Request from WIMC; A Milestone for ABET
RESOURCES: for Dharma study and support
THE LAST WORD: Christina Feldman
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EDITORIAL: New Light for a New Year
Ka puta Matariki ka rere Whanui. Ko te tohu tena o te tau e!
Matariki reappears, Whanui starts its flight. The sign of the new year!*
Have you ever kept watch in the black cold of a early winter morning, in the dark of the moon, and looked to the north-eastern horizon to see the star cluster of Matariki rise and herald the start of a new year? I keep meaning to… but either it is raining, or too cold, or I forget, or I sleep in, or no one else is keen to join me. So my personal encounter with Matariki has yet to happen.
The old time Maori were made of tougher stuff, and would sometimes keep watch for several nights in order to be sure to greet these stars (also known as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters) the very moment that they returned from their vacation below the horizon. The watchers might be warmed and strengthened by a hangi of recently harvested kumara, with the steam rising to the stars to strengthen them as well. Memories of those who had died since Matariki last appeared would be recalled, and kites might be flown. Right up until the end of the nineteenth century the period of the return of Matariki and its associated stars and moon was celebrated in various ways around Aotearoa. In the twentieth century the custom died out, but in the twenty-first century it has been revived. There was even a bill introduced to Parliament proposing that Matariki replace Queen’s Birthday as our winter public holiday.
Even though I have so far wimped out on getting up to greet these special stars, I like the idea of marking their return as a national holiday for two reasons. Firstly, it is an ancient, beautiful and very meaningful tradition, of much deeper and more universal significance than the birthday of a foreign monarch. Secondly, it is an authentic indigenous tradition which also happens to resonate strongly with the tradition of the man in a faraway time and place who sat down and kept watch through the night, until light dawned in his mind. Until he discovered why we can easily spend so much of our lives in an apology for being awake, and how we could shine more light into our minds and learn to see reality rather than illusions.
As Matariki keeps coming back to the skies every winter, so we can keep coming back to the illumination of these practices of waking up, even when all else is dark and cold.
Christine Dann
For more Matariki proverbs and other information about the festival, see http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/matariki-maori-new-year
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REFLECTION: from ’The Light Within the Dark: Zen, Soul & the Spiritual Life, by John Tarrant
The interior life is a place of the wild – uncivilized and unpredictable, giving us fevers, symptoms, and moments of beauty, Yet within the appearances of chaos are both a richness and deep level of orderliness. Like a national park the interior world does not do anything- it is the treasure-house of life. It can’t be strip-mined for our conscious purposes, the only request it makes of us is that we love it, and, in return, it responds to our attention. To learn to attend well is to discover our place in the natural order. It brings an element of consistency and harmony to our lives, and gives us a story about who we are. To learn to attend is the beginning. To learn to attend more and more deeply is the path itself.
For aboriginal people a wilderness is not something alien, but a kind of blessed garden. As our attention deepens, we too come to harmonise with existence, learn to see the thin vine that has a tuber underneath, or to follow the direction of the birds at sunset to a waterhole. Gradually we change. Our listening becomes more acute. We hear background as well as foreground noises, and we are no longer so surprised by the animals- the fears and longings of our inner life – and do not complain that someone else has caused their rough ways. When our attention is offered freely, the inner life in return becomes a friend to comfort and sustain us. Gradually, through our offered attention, we connect with the source out of which we came. We become aboriginal to ourselves, discovering how much we love our own inwardness.
Sometimes we want to live inside the source itself, and bend toward it like the heliotrope toward the changing light. To take this path, this whole direction, is to face towards spirit. We take up such a way for many reasons, for health, to live in goodness, to answer our great questions – but there is an element of unreason too. For we fall in love with spirit. Spirit is the centre of life, the light out of which we are born, with eyes still reflecting the darkness, and the light towards which our eyes turn when our breath goes out and does not come in again
The great inner traditions – Paleolithic shamanism to monastic Chrisitianity have brought us many disciplines to cultivate our link with spirit. Such work involves meditation, prayer, and the slow delicious process of letting go - everything we thought important drops away when the blaze and stillness at the centre fills the view.
Meditation – the primary method of spiritual inquiry, taking various forms in different traditions – plunges us into the source and saturates us with its waters, answering, in a certain fashion, our curiosity about what it is that we are. When we turn toward spirit, it compels us to its mode, in which eternity is everlastingly present within our lives, making the smallest moment vibrant and full of colour. Our underlying doubts about existence soften, and a constricting attachment to the narrow, received aspects of consciousness is weakened. The transparence of the world amazes us – at each moment we are surprised anew by the clarity of what we see: our undeniable connection to the source. We have come home at last, no longer alone on the earth.
Spirit is given. It is not produced by our attention, it is uncovered – showing us our link from the beginning with all of life, with frogs and trees and stones. And it is not more fond of us than it is of frogs and trees and stones. Bearing us past the deepest pains we suffer, past grief, war and death, it underlies all things.
Spirit’s path is real, heroic, and enormously seductive, and it’s revelation is always the same - in an experience of enlightenment or awakening the veils that obscure our view are lifted and our oneness with God and the universe is revealed. The wilderness is clearly recognized as a garden, and as our original home. To spirit, morality is a natural thing, like a hill it is just there – the good and the bad are clear but unexamined. Similarly, for spirit each moment is a fragment of eternity, just this is the ancient treasure of consciousness, and the portion of earth and time we inhabit now is the actuality of the everlasting fire.
Through attentiveness to spirit, we enter a place of reverence, of such deep witnessing of life that it is a kind of illumination. We see that woman, river, wind and star are all equal, and that death and life are both dreamlike processes, themselves part of a greater unchangingness. We are impressed by these discoveries, which have a natural dazzle to them; we are happy, we feel we have something to rely on. Just to have seen this world as it is seems enough for a lifetime. Even were we to die the same evening, we have seen eternity and it is enough.
The experience of spirit is natural. And most people have had a taste of it. Still, to know it’s consistent presence in our lives requires a discipline that seems severe at first. The discipline is the daily work of meditation and prayer. A steady practice evokes the feeling and imagery of winter – the cold that works on the bare naked boughs, preparing them for spring. Then, after we have plodded and endured, there is something arbitrary and astonishing about the irruption of spirit into awareness; nothing prepares us for the sudden grace of plum blossoms.
Reproduced with permission from The Light Within the Dark: Zen, Soul & the Spiritual Life, pp. 11–14, John Tarrant, 2002, printed in Australia by Griffin Press.
John Tarrant is a psychotherapist and teacher at the Pacific Zen Institute in the United States.
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QUOTE: The Buddha. From the Digha Nikaya, Chapter 11
“Where do water, earth, fire, & wind have no footing? Where are long & short, coarse & fine, fair & foul, name & form brought to an end? “The answer is: Consciousness without feature, without end, luminous all around: Here water, earth, fire, & wind have no footing. Here long & short coarse & fine fair & foul name & form are all brought to an end. With the cessation of ignorance each is here brought to an end.’”
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POEM: Czeslaw Milosz
A day so happy —
Fog lifted early, I worked in the garden.
Hummingbirds were stopping over honeysuckle flowers
There was nothing on earth I wanted to possess.
I knew no one worth my envying him.
Whatever evil I had suffered I forgot.
To think that I was once the same man did not embarrass me
In my body I felt no pain.
When straightening up I saw the blue sea and sails.
Milosz was a Polish poet,winner of many awards including the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980.
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STORY: It isn’t easy being enlightened – a conversation between the Buddha and Mara
In August 1962 the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a letter to one of his Zen teachers, saying that he had found the Truth. He wrote -
’ On May 7th, I witnessed a conversation between the Buddha and Mara.* Buddha received Mara on Vulture Peak as an honoured guest. I will write down their conversation and offer it as a sutra: Buddha: Please have a seat. Mara: Thank you, Sir. That assistant of yours, Ananda, is so difficult. When I announced my arrival, he refused to let me see you. He said: ‘What business have you here? The Buddha defeated you years ago at the foot of the Bodhi Tree, and he certainly will not receive you now. You are his enemy.’ But he was forced to let me in when I countered his arguments. Buddha: (laughing) What did you tell him? Mara: I asked ‘So the Buddha has enemies now?’ A Buddha with enemies is not a true Buddha. Your attendant obviously understood that, and he let me in. Buddha: You always triumph over others using trickery. You wouldn’t be Mara if you didn’t. Mara: Exactly. My dear Buddha, let me tell you what is troubling me. People dress me in paper clothes and paint my face to look cruel and stupid. They say I breathe the dark smoke of suspicion. That’s the only form they give me. Wherever I go, I am feared and despised. It is really no fun being Mara. Buddha: You think being a Buddha is fun? Businesses use me to sell their products. Devotees carry me on floats and drag me through streets filled with boutiques on both sides, selling coal, fish sauce, and who knows what else? Don’t think you’d be happier as a Buddha. Hearing this, Mara burst out laughing.’
Taken from ‘Fragrant Palm Leaves Journals 1962 – 1966’ pp 40-42 Thich Nhat Hanh (1999), translated by Mobi Warren New York: Riverhead Books,
Mara is a form of devil who is always trying to tempt the Buddha to abandon teaching and practising the Dharma.
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WISE WORDS: Rumi and Dogen
“Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us. We taste only sacredness.” Rumi
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To study the Buddha’s way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by ten thousand things.
Eihei Dogen
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CULTIVATING THE DHARMA GARDEN: New Light in the Dharma Garden
After an unseasonally warm, dry May, the weather turned wet and cold early this month, so that when I went out into the garden to see what was going on, it was wet below me and wet above me. The sky was grey, with clouds halfway down the hills. The days are drawing in to the winter solstice. The shortest day; the day on which the Earth turns back to the light.
In the garden it seems as though some of the plants are still looking back to autumn, while the rest are looking forward to spring. For a few special plants, however, this is their best time. In the darkest, coldest days the bell-like flowers – white, purple, pink – of the winter rose or Helleborus orientalis rise from under its leaves, which grow like the fat green fingers of a giant’s hand on top of their stalks. In the food garden it is time to start picking citrus fruit, kiwifruit and tamarillos – just when we most need their range of flavours and nutrients. It is also time to plant broad beans for spring harvest, and garlic to be harvested in midsummer.
These seeds will lie in the dark for two months or more, and then their shoots will come into the light. The bean seed that weighs less than a gram will grow into a plant at least a metre tall, weighing kilograms when all its beans have filled their pods. All it needs to do this is soil, water – and a lot of light. Mostly light. I once read about an experiment where a tree was grown in a big container. The soil in the container was weighed before the tree was planted, and after it had reached a height of several metres. By this stage the tree was far too heavy to lift – but the soil was only about a kilogram lighter. It was photosynthesis – the process of turning light into matter – that contributed most to growing the tree.
I think about this experiment every time I think about an ‘unenlightened’ fertiliser obtained from dubious sources and by dubious means – phosphorus from mines in illegally-occupied Western Sahara, or from dug-out and dug-over Pacific Islands, for example. Or nitrogen from rapidly dwindling natural gas supplies. Gas formed, like other hydrocarbons, from ancient plants which grew thanks to light – not fertilisers.
So when it stops raining I will be out in the garden cutting back the shrubs and trees that are starting to shade out their fellow plants. The plants that in summer needed more water are now saying to me – more light!
Christine Dann
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QUOTE: Joseph Goldstein
“In the very moment that we awaken from being lost in a thought or feeling or reaction, in that very moment we can recognise the empty, clear, skylike nature of awareness itself. In that moment of wakefulness, we get a glimpse of freedom. And instead of judging ourselves for all the times we do get lost, which happen again and again, we can delight in each moment of awakening.”
From ‘One Dharma’ by Joseph Goldstein, page 38. Published in the USA by Harper One, 2002.
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THANKS: to INSIGHTAotearoa supporters
Our gratitude goes to Ramsey Margolis for his dana in contributing to the funding of the Insight Aotearoa website, and to Ilana Becroft and Margo Schiller who have now taken on the job of sending out this newsletter by post.
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THEMES: for upcoming issues
INSIGHTAotearoa will be taking a winter break during July. The theme for the August issue (due out August 2; deadline July 26) is ‘Death and Dying’, and for the September issue (due out September 6; deadline August 30) it is ‘Wise Action’. Send contributions to kanya @ insightaotearoa.org
SANGHA NEWS:
A REQUEST from Wellington Insight Meditation Community
Wellington Insight Meditation Community is looking for a volunteer to audit the accounts of the charitable trust it uses to run the sangha. This person might be an auditor or an accountant. There are very few transactions so this is not a large task. We’d like someone to do this pro bono as their dana to the community. If you, or anyone you know, might be interested in this role, contact the community’s treasurer, Janice Hill | jfh @ paradise.net.nz | 021 939 284 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 021 939 284 end_of_the_skype_highlighting.
A MILESTONE FOR ABET
For the first time since it was launched, Aotearoa Buddhist Education Trust has supported bringing a teacher to New Zealand. ABET trustee Viv Blackshaw received $694 towards the cost of bringing Gregory Kramer to New Zealand, where he offered retreats in Auckland and Wellington, inspiring some with their first experience of insight dialogue and others to deepen their practice.
Gregory brought with him a teacher in training, Mary Burns. It is hoped that Mary will be able to return to New Zealand next year.
ABET is now hoping to be able to fund a visit by Jason Siff. A monk in Sri Lanka for a number of years, Jason returned home to the USA where he developed the practice of recollective awareness, a practice in which people are invited to look more deeply into their meditative process. For a number of years, Jason has been travelling to Australia each year offering retreats and teaching others to facilitate recollective awareness practice. Jason is keen to spend a couple of weeks in New Zealand in 2011 visiting sitting groups and individuals, talking about and demonstrating recollective awareness.
Jason’s page is at http://www.abet.net.nz/jason-siff-2011/.
ABET is currently raising funds to bring the following teachers to New Zealand:
Martine and Stephen Batchelor
Eric Kolvig
Jason Siff
- Ramsey Margolis (ABET trustee)
INSIGHTAotearoa goes out in the first week of the month, listing Insight meditation events during the month to follow throughout the country as well as containing articles of interest, encouraging and assisting the formation and growth of communities of meditation practitioners around the country. This issue is going out by email to 390 people and to 15 by post.
Please help us keep the SANGHA NEWS section of INSIGHTAotearoa up-to-date by sending news and corrections regarding events, sitting group details, etc. to christine @ insightaotearoa.org
INSIGHTAotearoa comes to you without a subscription price because our readers offer dana (donations) to support it. A traditional Buddhist generosity practice, dana received will be used to develop the newsletter, and the community that practises insight meditation. Regular automatic payments are very welcome. You can also post cash or cheques to 13 Wrantage St, Westown, New Plymouth, making cheques payable to INSIGHTAotearoa. Here is the bank account information:
† Account name: INSIGHTAotearoa † Bank: ASB Bank † Branch: Lambton Quay † Account number: 12-3140-0285603-00 † From outside New Zealand, the SWIFT code is: ASBBNZ 2A.
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RESOURCES: for Dharma study and support
‘MINDFULNESS IN PLAIN ENGLISH’ This excellent basic guide to Insight meditation by the Ven Henepola Gunaratana can now be downloaded from http://www.urbandharma.org/dharma4/mpe.htm
AOTEAROA BUDDHIST EDUCATION TRUST A charitable trust which raises funds to bring insight meditation teachers to New Zealand. To find out more visit http://www.abet.net.nz
INSIGHT MEDITATION IN AOTEAROA ON THE WEB
http://www.insightmeditation.org.nz – information on New Zealand’s insight meditation practitioners and communities
http://www.insightaotearoa.org – the website for this newsletter
http://www.southern.insightmeditation.org.nz – Christchurch sangha Southern Insight’s website
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THE LAST WORD:
“In the spiritual life there is no room for compromise. Awakening is not negotiable; we cannot bargain to hold on to things that do not matter to us. A lukewarm yearning for awakening is not enough to sustain us through the difficulties involved in letting go. It is important to understand that anything that can be lost was never truly ours, anything that we deeply cling to only imprisons us.”
From Soul Food, Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart by Jack Kornfield & Christina Feldman, Jon Kabat-Zinn, p. 310, pub. by Harperone 1996
with metta, Christine Dann, Kanya Stewart – supported by Caren Wilton, Peter Fernando & Marianne Adams