In this issue:
When I first started training with the teachings of Rev. Master Jiyu, I realized that she frequently used the term “kaleidoscopic mind.” Rev. Master mentioned that we would find it helpful to develop this kind of mind and let it permeate through our attitude and actions in daily life.
At first, I had a hard time getting a feel for what she was pointing to. To start, I looked up what a kaleidoscope was: “a constantly changing set of colors and images” and “changing of phases or events.” What came up for me, then, was to work on being flexible and open to changeableness and not fight it with my own rigid ideas and opinions.
In a series of public lectures collected in Roar of the Tigress, Volume I, and monastic lectures collected in Roar of the Tigress, Volume II, Rev. Master provided more dimensions to what she meant. I find three of these teachings particularly helpful.
1. Kaleidoscopic mind is not flat and two-dimensional, it requires that you drop off either/or thinking and allow your mind to open to new ways—not just new ways of thinking but new ways of seeing and being.
2. When you realize the true extent of purity and stillness, you can realize your position in the scheme of things, and you know the awe-fullness of the Unborn. You “see” the world as if through an ever-changing kaleidoscope that can see the Eternal in everything.
3. To develop a more kaleidoscopic mind necessitates continually being willing to set aside the opposites that your thinking mind will present to you.
Rev. Master always said that, within all the changeableness in life, there is always the constant flow of the Eternal’s pure love, compassion, and nonjudgmental acceptance. This is our true refuge within all changeableness and impermanence.
Rev. Master had a lava lamp that, like a kaleidoscope, provides a graphic metaphor for changeableness within the Eternal. In a lava lamp are blobs of wax in a liquid medium. When heated by a light bulb, the blobs rise and fall and become ever-changing shapes. The liquid medium makes the changes possible, yet is not itself changed by them. This liquid medium is like the ever-present compassion, love, and wisdom of the Eternal within which all the changing conditions of our daily lives arise and pass. Usually, we are so focused on the “blobs” of change and impermanence in our lives that we fail to realize or appreciate the medium of compassion and love that supports them. When, through our training in meditation and the Precepts, our minds and hearts are opened to the Eternal, we discover a wealth of compassion within changing conditions. Then, as Rev. Master Jiyu said, “You ‘see’ the world as if through an ever-changing kaleidoscope that can see the Eternal in everything.”
Dissolving into a vast and supportive body of light
I bathe in the pristine luminosity of the present.
How unfathomably precious is even a single moment of this life,
How complete and magnificent the Lord.
There is no possibility of enhancing this perfection;
I wish only to be a vehicle for It.
NEWS OF THE TEMPLES
North Cascades Buddhist Priory
Calendar of Events for 2021 and Keeping of the Ten Precepts Retreat.
The Priory calendar of events for 2021 has been posted here.
Because of the pandemic, we were unable to offer the Keeping of the Ten Precepts Retreat in 2020. However, during the last few months we have been learning how to host retreats for a small number of guests while at the same time maintaining a high level of safety for both resident monks and guests. And so we will again offer the Keeping of the Ten Precepts Retreat in the spring of 2021.
In order to do this, we will have to shorten and simplify the retreat. In external form it will differ from the traditional Keeping of the Ten Precepts Retreat. However, the intention with which we will do the retreat will be the same as it has always been. And there is already this benefit: the limitations within which we will have to work are forcing us to meditatively consider anew the meaning of each of the traditional ceremonies that take place during this retreat, and of the Precepts themselves.