Retreat Readings
Some Readings on the art of ‘Just-Seeing’
Meditation
‘The fruit of meditation is simply seeing. We, by-and-large, do not see, for our minds are clouded with self -thoughts,self-fears, self-wishes, self-illusions, self-images…in fact, virtually all we see is the result of this self-absorbtion. Meditation frees us from this obsessive-seeing so that our minds become just seeing…mountains, rivers, trees…
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Here’s how a well-known Korean Zen master celebrates this pure seeing:
Happy Birthday
To all you noble Buddhas currently living in prison, happy birthday.
To all you austere Buddhas selling your smiles in taverns, happy birthday.
To you countless Buddhas twinkling in the night sky, happy birthday.
And happy birthday to all of you brightly smiling, beautiful Buddhas in the gardens.
To all you Buddhas who have become endlessly changing clouds as you drift across the sky, to all you Buddhas who are quietly biding your time as boulders?a very happy birthday to you, too.
And happy birthday to all you cute little Buddhas swimming in the water. To all you lively Buddhas soaring about the sky. To all you reverential Buddhas singing hymns in churches, and to all you handsome Buddhas chanting in temples.
To all you Buddhas hoeing and plowing the fields and paddies, to all you Buddhas sweating in the humming factories, to all you Buddhas working in dust and dirt, and to all you Buddhas quietly studying in classrooms-let me wish you all a very happy birthday.
When I open my eyes, you are Buddha. When I close my eyes, you are Buddha. Every place in the universe is filled with Buddha! The heavens and the earth are from the same source, and everything in the universe is One Buddha. Although we all have different guises and appearances, we're all manifestations of this One Buddha. Everything is equal, and everything is magnificent! So let us transcend our torments in this world of Buddha, and enjoy happiness. How marvellous that every single place is a site for liberation from suffering and ignorance!
To all you Buddhas wearing the gentle smile of compassion and delivering the Dharma in a sound even greater than thunder, to all you Buddhas who fill every corner of the universe-every day is a wonderful day, and every day is our birthday. So let us all eternally respect and congratulate one another.
- Ven. Song-chol Sunim
And here, a well-loved Christian monk celebrates this same, pure act of just- seeing:
According to Thomas Merton, in contemplation, God – the no-thing, the emptiness that is the heart of all – becomes, for us, ALL in ALL:
- When [through meditation] we lose our special, separate cultural and religious identity – the ‘self’ or ‘persona’ that is the subject of virtues as well as visions, that perfects itself by good works, that advances in the practice of piety – (it is then) that Christ is finally born in us in the highest sense….
Our meditative ‘experience’ of self-emptying is a manifestation, a revelation of the ‘emptiness’ of God:
- The ALL is nothing, for if it were to be a single thing separated from all other things, it would not be ALL. This precisely is the liberty I have always sought: the freedom of being subject to nothing and therefore to live in ALL, through ALL, for ALL, by Him who is ALL. In Christian terms, this is to live ‘in Christ’ and by the ‘Spirit of Christ’, for the Spirit is like the wind, blowing where It pleases, and It is the Spirit of Truth. The ‘Truth shall make you free’.
- But if the truth is to make me free, I must also let go my hold upon myself, and not retain the semblance of a self which is an object of a ‘thing’. I, too, must be no-thing. And when I am no-thing I am in the ALL, and Christ lives in me.’
We are God’s image/we have Buddha Nature:
- Desert and void. The uncreated is waste and emptiness to the creature. Not even sand. Not even stone. Not even darkness and night. A burning wilderness would at least be ‘something’. It burns and is wild. But the Uncreated is no something. Waste. Emptiness. Total poverty of the Creator: yet from this poverty springs everything. The waste is inexhaustible. Infinite Zero. Every-thing wants to return to it and cannot. For who can return ‘nowhere’? But for each of us there is a point of nothingness in the midst of being: the incompar-able point, not be by discovered by insight. If you seek it you do not find it. If you stop seeking, it is there. But you must not turn to it. Once you become aware of yourself as seeker, you are lost. But if you are content to be lost you will be found without knowing it, precisely because you are lost, for you are, at last, nowhere.
- At the centre of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is so to speak His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely. . . I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.
‘The Gate of Heaven’ is, in Zen terms, ‘The Gateless Gate’ – something Thomas Merton understood very well.
