A glass of Verduzzo

Here is an article I wrote in Czech last March. (As I was working on the translation I changed a few things, including the title, as in English I tend to think a little bit differently and sticking to the Czech original sounded strange. So it is edited and not a word-by-word translation. Plus I  would like to add a short introduction. 

This article was originally called Dharma Is Always Here. What do I mean by the term Dharma? Probably, when you started to study and practice Buddhism, one of the first things you came across, were the categories Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. I think most people know that “dharma” means Buddha’s teaching. But when you study Buddhism for some time, you may find out that dharma also means reality or law or similar things. So when I use the word dharma, I mean Buddha’s teaching in its essence. Not the volume of his sayings or rules or statements, but the very thing, the essential thing he wanted to pass to others, the flower he turned in his fingers. So by dharma I mean the essence of Buddha’s teaching, which is often called simply dharma.

Another thing I would like to say before we look at the article itself is that we have a dilemma in Buddhism. Should Buddhism be explained simply and clearly so everyone can quickly understand what Buddha taught or should it be explained in a lot of strange, sometimes poetic, sometimes mystical images, metaphors, should it be confusing and challenging, should it try to shatter our intellect so in the end we have no clue what Buddhism is? It seems a simple, clear explanation would be best. But why did so many Buddhist teachers in the past use strange images, metaphors, complicated essays, contradictions and sometimes complete nonsense to express the truth Buddha found? I think we cannot naively hope that Buddhist teaching can be summed up in a few simple statements. Even if we sum it up in something like Four Noble Truths, what can we do with such a summary? Will it help us to realise what Buddha realised? I don’t think so. We sometimes need a simple summary. What is Zen? Zen is ordinary life. Simple and clear. But a second after you happily accept this statement, your intellectual mind might come up with a question. What is ordinary life? Is this mess in the kitchen or on the floor my ordinary life? Are my arguments with my wife and children ordinary life? Is trying to make a bit more money ordinary life? Some will say, yes, of course, all these things are real, so I am living a Buddhist life. Great. I don’t think it is as simple as that. In Zen we need to get over our limited understanding of the world and get over our limited self. To understand “my life is difficult” or “my life is amazing” is not enough. I have to shatter such ideas myself every day, over and over again.  Instead of such simplistic understanding of oneself and one’s life, Buddha offered dharma… the truth itself. The Buddhist truth. Now it is not easy to understand what he meant by the truth, let alone practice this truth in our lives. You can disagree. But what I think or what you think is not the point…

Here is the (edited) article I wrote in March:  

There are two kinds of spirituality. One is one that helps us personally. We don't care if the neighbour suffers, especially if we are happy. Of course, doing something for ourselves is not always selfish, on the contrary, but we often do these things primarily to help ourselves. We go to meditation classes, yoga, taichi and similar things to achieve peace and harmony. This kind of individualistic practice is not what Buddha meant. Sorry.

Then there is spirituality, where we must give up trying to achieve something personal, although that does not mean we neglect our essential needs. We eat, sleep, wash, try to maintain our health. This is, of course, very important in a time of pandemic, because our health equals the health of others and vice versa. But dharma that Buddha taught is not here so that we become  happy, harmonious, and enlightened as individuals. That’s why Kodo Sawaki often attacks people who are interested in satori. Personal satori or enlightenment is useless, it is actually something that kills true dharma, it has nothing to do with Buddha’s teaching. You can have a personal breakthrough experience, but if it is useful at all, you will see it is useless unless you clearly see it is not yours or for you, it belongs to the universe and has to be returned to the universe immediately. Because dharma is independent on such personal achievements, dharma is where your personal profit really does not exist at all. So what does Dharma mean to us when it is nothing that a person could profit from? What is it and why should we practice and realize dharma in our lives?

The pandemic shows us that the world of people with their games, desires, opinions, successes and failures is something dharma doesn’t care about. Some people get infected, some don't, some die, some die young, some old. It is something dharma has no opinion of. Dharma is not a god who wants to give us signals or directions. Dharma is perfectly cynical when compared to God. Why should we study and practice something that is not interested in our well-being? Because dharma is the only thing that is left here when we throw away all people's opinions and values. You could lose interest in dharma, because the world of people is full of  beautiful things, values, nobility, wisdom, art, education, problem solving, consolation and pleasure. Should we give up such a fascinating world? There is an interesting paradox. The most wonderful things people created and experience are supported by dharma. But also the worst, the most horrible things are supported by dharma. Without dharma, you get illusions, ideas. In dharma, you get what there is without your opinions. When you let go of illusions and ideas, the beauty is still there, the pain is still there.  But it is free of human mind. It is not your beauty or her beauty, it is not your pain or their pain, it is just pain.  So when we let go of the human aspect of reality, we have genuine reality, intact, this is a kind of freedom you can only experience when you are willing  to let go of everything that comes up in your mind. Then everything is pure dharma.   

The Buddha attained the awakening to this dharma where there is no longer a human evaluation of things, no evaluation of anything, there is no more me versus you, truth versus lie, good versus evil. At this point, there is nothing to say -  otherwise you add horns to a rabbit. Although there is nothing to say about dharma, Buddha decided to teach this dharma and he used a lot of words. He knew the words would never express dharma perfectly, but he needed a method to pass the truth he found. Later turning a flower in his fingers he used an action and it expressed dharma perfectly. So sometimes talking, sometimes acting he taught something we call dharma. Many people mistakenly believe Buddha was enlightened. When Buddha arrived at the truth he could see the truth is just here and now and everyone is enlightened. Now we know this is not so easy to grasp but we need to grasp this fact and express this fact in our everyday lives. We need to turn flowers and lift fingers without imitating anyone or feeling “enlightened”.

When you tell a child that bitter medicine is sweet, you try to help them to swallow the pill - it's for the good of the child. So when the Buddha began to teach others, he could not behave like some Chinese teachers and shout or wave a stick in the air. He was in India. Buddha started very positively. And throughout his work, the Buddha taught very positively. That was his style. When he saw that his disciples were too spiritual, he poured cold water on them (figuratively speaking). When they seemed to have an opinion on the dharma, he refuted it. And so all Buddhist teachers try to give directions to the truth, sometimes talking, sometimes acting, sometimes being quiet practising zazen.

Of course, this does not mean that we will not have opinions within the human world. I have a lot of opinions. But in zazen I flush them down the toilet, I flush myself, I revive myself, I return to the dharma, that which is here without my opinion, and so I am born again and again, every day, hopefully many times a day, whenever my silly ideas don't possess me. When dharma takes over, the whole universe is without a mistake. In that universe, nothing needs to be improved.   But we must encourage people to try and deepen their understanding of themselves and the world, otherwise they will never understand why everything is already perfect. Our ability to get over ourselves and make a bold step into the truth here and now is the most important skill we have. Even if we cannot appreciate this ability yet, we can rely on the fact that essentially we don’t have to add anything to our body and mind in order to become true people. On the other hand, when we let our thinking eat away our awakened energy, the joy of buddhas is imprisoned behind a thick wall.     

Now let's put it into practice: Let's forget what I wrote and have a glass of Verduzzo. Or a glass of whatever you find in the kitchen.