DHARMA TALK

Intimacy and Compassion by Roshi Enkyo O’Hara

How can we offer our compassion to others? In the Vimalakirti Sutra, there is a scene in which the main character  (Vimalakirti) has become sick as a device to teach the dharma.  He is asked by Manjusri how a bodhisattva (an enlightening being) should treat a living being with compassion.

To read the full Dharma Talk, click here.

Vimalakirti answers, 

He/She treats them with a compassion that hides nothing, proceeding with the purity of an upright mind; treats them with the compassion of a deeply searching mind, one free of irrelevant motion; treats them with a compassion that is unerring, innocent of falsity and sham; treats them with a compassion full of peace and delight, for through it they gain the delight of the Buddha. Such is the compassion of the Bodhisattva.” (Watson, p.85 regarding living beings, ch.7)

I’d like to unpack this a little, to help us see a little better the path to expressing great compassion. How can we find this compassion?

First, he says,

He/She treats them with a compassion that hides nothing, proceeding with the purity of an upright mind;

This can be so hard to do. We can’t really have an upright mind, a mind that hides nothing, if in fact we are hiding from ourselves. This requires nothing less than a wholehearted, extreme commitment to wake up to ourselves, moment to moment, sensation by sensation, to allow ourselves to be aware of what we are experiencing no matter how painful or uncomfortable or embarrassing.

In Zen, we call this intimacy: we get so close to our experiencing body/mind, that we spontaneously just experience what we are experiencing without the walls, the curtains, the clouds of protection we have built around ourselves.

It is like walking outside the last few days: Ahhhhhh! Blossoms! Or, when we are sad “ohhhh” when we are angry, “grrrr”…. as awareness, not as expression.  The choice of expression comes later. What is real, authentic is the moment of awareness, the moment of intimacy.

This ‘hides nothing’ of Vimalakirti is hides nothing from our own body/mind. When we are utterly in tune with our own body/mind, then we free our energy to presence the situation at hand.

When my four year old son appeared in front of my one day completely covered in blood, I still remember the shock, the fear, and the immediate reaction of turning a water hose on him to locate his injuries - which turned out to be a rather minor but bloody cut on his hand that he had managed to splash all over his face and body.

I use this example because in that first moment of seeing him, as I was picking him up taking his clothes off and pouring water on him, at that same time I also saw my squeamishness, my maternal fears, and yes, a whole body recognition: this is HORRID!

When we are faced with extreme situations, we are able to summon our energy to act effectively, we have no choice, the situation demands it of us.

But in our day-to-day encounters with life, we often respond by hiding, by retreating behind a false self that we have constructed.  We lose the ‘upright mind’ that Vimalakirti extols. The mind that ‘hides nothing.’

How is it we can come to stand freely with our own mind? With our own self? How do we meet ourselves? There is a hint of this in the next sentence Vimalakirti utters:

[She] treats them with the compassion of a deeply searching mind, one free of irrelevant motion;

What would that be? Honest, deep penetration into what is, and free of irrelevancies, free of self absorption, free of ideas from others, from conception, an experienced reality that has been scraped clean of idealized notions, that is simply and utterly here.

Then, Vimalakirti goes on to say,

treats them with a compassion that is unerring, innocent of falsity and sham;

To be free of sentimentality, of smarmy, phony responses. It is to actually be present without an idea of oneself as saintly, clever, bright, or complex, dark, and oh so compassionate.  Instead, the simple reality of where you are right now. It is to be authentic.

With that freedom of phoniness, that freedom of restlessness, that freedom from hiding, the Bodhisattva is free to respond, and in Vimalakirti’s words,

treats them with a compassion full of peace and delight, for through it they gain the delight of the Buddha.

To be truly awake - as implied in the very name “buddha” (one who wakes up), to be truly awake is not just a gift to ourselves, but also a gift to all whom we encounter. It is a way that we create what are called ‘buddhafields’ around us, spheres of influence colored by the quality of authenticity, of presence, of true Intimacy

We do this by the simple practice of becoming intimate through meditation practice, through the discipline of looking deeply within so we can serve those around us.  Our seated meditation and self-inquiry trains us to hold that honesty, clarity, uprightness in all our daily interactions.

Sitting quietly,

one minute, one hour, no matter,

finding the quiet within,

I find myself, again and again.

finding myself, I offer the quiet light

to those on the street, in the office,

all around me.

To the lost and suffering beings to the bewildered

and questioning,

Even to the bare sparrow tree with its leafless

branches filled with chirping sparrows.