In this talk I want to say something about having the faith to keep one’s mind and heart open.
We live in uncertain times. None of us expected to be in the position that we are in, with this pandemic raging in the world at the moment. Things come unexpectedly. The same is true in the spiritual life. Things come along that you never expected to happen. It takes a certain faith to keep one’s mind and heart open. Many people, they’ve allowed their minds to close. They have fixed attitudes. They have a fixed political outlook. They are for this, and against that. Or they have a fixed spiritual practice. It’s become just kind of business as usual and that’s useful in a certain way because it keeps you going, keeps you on track, but the danger is that you then close stuff out, you stop looking afresh at what comes along.
There’s a passage in the Lotus Sutra that I'd like to just read. This is at the beginning of Chapter 4, Chapter 4 is the chapter about the prodigal son’s story. At this point, there is a group of arhats - arhats are enlightened beings - who are talking to the Buddha and they say:
“And now, in the presence of the Buddha we have heard the shravakas receive their prediction of the highest complete enlightenment and we are very joyful to have obtained such an unprecedented experience. We never considered that we would suddenly be able to hear this marvelous teaching and we are overjoyed that we have obtained such great benefits and immeasurable treasure which we attained though unsought and unawaited.”
Now the thing that is interesting to me about this little passage is that these are people who have been practising for years and years and years and years, and yet they received a teaching that’s “unsought and unawaited”. It's a surprise, comes suddenly, like that.
It tells us something about the right attitude, the right view to have towards our spiritual practice. And because we are practicing as ordinary bombu deluded beings, we don't know what the next step will be. We are lost in samsara. The Buddha's light will come to us, but it won't come by our contrivance. If we are deluded our contrivance will be deluded. It will not take us in the right direction. It's not the case that our practice - practice of our design and our intention - will generate awakening, enlightenment and so on. Whatever blessing the Buddha has for us will come to us as a surprise even if we’ve been practising for years and years and years and years. So what can we do?
What we can do is to do the very best we can with the life that we’ve got. To accept the lot that has been dealt to us, the situation we're in. It might be the coronavirus lock down situation. It could be any situation. It could be a particular practice, whatever it is. We give it the best we can. We give it everything we can in our present circumstance. And then it may well be that the angels will come and they will give us something more, they will give us something new, but it will come as a surprise. We don't go searching for what they’ve got or what they can give us because there’s no possibility that we could understand or we can find in that way.
We just have to have the faith. We trust that if we give our best to what we have now, to the situation we are in right now, and we live it with the right spirit, compassion, joy, love and so on, then everything that should happen will happen as it should. And we will be given whatever it is that we need to be given at the right time. This is the right attitude towards practice and life.
Thank you very much
Namo Amida Bu
Dharmavidya
David
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