I'm interrupting our progress with the ten questions to tell you about a wonderful retreat I went on last month. Called "Dharma Flower turning Dharma Flower" it was at Gaia House, here in Devon where I live, and led by Reb Anderson, from Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, California http://www.sfzc.org/ggf/. This was my third or fourth retreat with Reb as teacher.
This year I arrived early to make sure of getting a gardening job. Isn't that pathetic! I am used to retreats where no choice is given in anything (e.g. at John's Welsh farmhouse), which is a relief from normal life, but if there's going to be choice then I'm going to choose, and I was glad I did; getting outside and doing physical work for an hour a day makes the sitting much easier. In his talk the first evening Reb asked "Who is proud?" I slowly put up my hand, as did a few others. "No, he said "I want a more whole-hearted, or whole-bodied, response" So I jumped to my feet. Pride is not something I have thought about much or thought I had any problem with but somehow something clicked, and for the rest of the retreat I saw my own pride everywhere.
The topic for the retreat was "Dharma Flower turning Dharma Flower", a saying from Dogen's commentary on the Lotus Sutra. In his daily lectures Reb shared with us his love of the Lotus Sutra. "You must love it" he insisted "You don't need to like it, you may dislike it, but you can love it". When he added that the same is true for the Bible and the Koran there were a few sharp intakes of breath (mine as loud as any) but I think he would say the same about everything - indeed he did say that last year - you can love all beings while liking some and disliking others. After all, we are doing this practice for the sake of all beings - not just sentient beings, people and animals and so on, but all thoughts, images, objects - everything that we turn into a thing.
So we heard stories and parables and were introduced to all sorts of difficult ideas about vehicles, flowers that are the whole universe and just sitting that is Buddhas meeting Buddhas face to face. Perhaps most memorable was the parable of the burning house from Chapter Three of the Lotus Sutra. A man owns a huge, expensive but decaying mansion and inside are all his many children, playing with their toys. When the mansion catches fire there is only one tiny gate out. The man knows that he could lift all his many children and carry them but they would never all fit through the tiny gate together. So instead he lures them out with promises of even better toys - carriages pulled by deer, goats and oxen. Or perhaps he lures them with fantastic computers that never crash, says Reb.
This burning house is our lives. We are all living in the burning house but too preoccupied with our email, jobs, troubles, toys, relationships and other things to notice that it is on fire. Since his vivid descriptions I have been acutely aware that this life I am living is all the burning house.
But what are these vehicles and how can one get out ? .....
