Vajrasattva Retreat 2005:

On 5 January 2005, a three-month Vajrasattva Retreat was held at Sravasti Abbey. During the retreat, each morning the participants took turns leading their fellow retreatants in cultivating a good motivation for their meditation that day. You may want to read one of these motivations each morning to inspire your practice

Motivations by Kathleen - Mar 14, 2005

First, I need to say that every time it is my turn to lead, I get a little crazy. (I imagine that we all do, when it's our turn). Partly it's because my own motivation in leading makes me into a "walking dichotomy", in Bo's words. What I really want in my Buddha Heart is to say something that will help you on your path to enlightenment. But, my untamed ego gets caught up with saying it right, sounding clever, being smart, looking good and building my reputation with you. Now, with that out of the way, the topic for today's sermon is:

Things Are Not What They Appear To Be.

The Thesaurus defines motive as, "the object influencing a choice". We each chose to be here at the Abbey, doing this practice. Why? If you are like me, there are many reasons for your choice. One of my main ones is that I am determined to discover the truth about this human existence. I think we are all truth seekers here. We want to get to the bottom of what is really going; just what is reality?

In his root text, "The essence of Eloquent Speech, Praise To The Buddha for Teaching Profound Dependent Arising", Lama Tsongkhapa wrote:

I bow down to him whose insight and speech
Make him unexcelled as sage and teacher;
The Victor, who realized (ultimate truth),
Then taught us dependently-related arising.
Ignorance is the very root
Of all troubles in this transitory world,
These are averted by understanding
The dependent-arising which you have taught.

How then could the intelligent
Not understand that the path
Of dependently-related arising
Is the essence of your teaching?

These verses come from "The Harmony of Emptiness and Dependent Arising by Ven Lobsang Gyatso, a book in the Abbey library.

So, we are in a dilemma. With our obscured minds and big fat egos, we just have to begin to understand dependent arising. Our obscured minds will confuse us. And our big fat egos will resist us at every step, because their existence depends on our ignorance. But, as Chogyam Trungpa says, "you are encouraged to say to your ego: you have caused tremendous trouble for me and I don't like you. I am going to destroy you".

So, let's take a few moments and depending on past teachings from Venerable and readings from Thich Nhat Hahn, I will share one example of my limited understanding of dependent arising. My hope is that it encourages us to sharpen the purification of our minds so we can someday fully grasp the essence of this topic and free ourselves and others.

Everyone is wearing a shirt of some kind this morning. Think about your shirt. Did your ego create it? No. Your shirt is a dependent arising. Imagine some of the life of just your one shirt. First, this shirt was an idea in a designer's mind. That designer depends on infinite ancestors for her existence. Then another person had to manufacture the material for the shirt. And that person's great, great, great grandmother had to meet, love and reproduce with his great, great, great grandfather, or he would not exist.

When I think of my shirt, I like to think about a woman, in a factory, probably in Asia, or in a maquiladora in Mexico. My shirt does not cost much here because this woman gets up early, works very hard for low pay and goes to bed late in order to sew it and take care of her family. According to our belief system, she has been my little sister in so many past lives. We have been so close, sharing the same bedroom. Now, she sacrifices hours of her life to make a living and I get a nice, useful shirt. Her work and care is in my shirt. She is in my shirt. All of her children's lives are in my shirt. The sun, water, fields where the cotton grew, machines, trucks, shops and workers are all in my shirt. There are so many things in this shirt. But the one thing not in it is the "shirt" that appears to my confused mind. We are so very inter-dependent. And everything is like this; full of infinite causes and conditions and empty of the way it appears to us.

Now, thank your mother for your skin and bones. Did your big ego create them? No. Do you depend on them? Of course.

Our understanding of reality, of this truth, of how things really exist depends on the purity of our minds. We can never understand this until we remove more of our obscurations. And doing that depends on Vajrasattva. So, let's take refuge in him and the entire Buddha Field full of the Three Jewels and stick with our determination to fully grasp reality and end all suffering.