In this issue:
Rev. Master Jiyu used to say, “The monastery has fences around it in order to keep the world out, not to keep the monks in.” The world is kept at arm’s length so that the precious spiritual work can be done with a minimum of interference.
Our body and mind are like a little monastery. Our physical senses, our intellect, our body, our will, and consciousness itself are the fundamental “departments” of this monastery. And at the heart of the whole assemblage is a seemingly empty Founder’s Shrine within which a single candle burns—the light of true faith, the source of which is the Buddha Nature Itself.
There are no obvious fences around this little monastery. So the departments of the monastery have to work together to guard and nurture the light of faith. This is the reason why the Rules for Meditation instruct us to “Control mind function, will, consciousness, memory, perception, and understanding” in order to “withdraw within and reflect upon yourself.”
The Secret Place at the heart of our little monastery of body and mind can seem empty, and it is important to restrain oneself from willfully trying to fill it with something. Serene meditation can roll along quietly in the midst of utter seeming-nothingness. All one has to do is “cut all ties, give up everything,”—having nothing, knowing nothing, clinging to nothing. Indeed, one can experience this seeming-emptiness so thoroughly that one experiences it as just being nothing oneself.
How can one experience such utter emptiness and not despair?—Just “sit up straight in the presence of the Buddhas,” relax completely, concentrate the mind in pure meditation, and look up spiritually, rather than down.
Despair says, “I have nothing. I know nothing. I am alone. I am nothing. There is no meaning to all this. There is no love. There is no refuge.”
Looking up in the midst of utter emptiness we find, “I have nothing; I know nothing; there is nothing to hold on to: it does not matter. It does not matter if I am alone. It does not matter if I am nothing. It is enough to just sit still in the empty Shrine of the Spirit. Nothing matters: mindfulness is all.”
To be plunged fully into seeming-emptiness, and to look up, makes it possible for the darkness of our ignorance to be illumined by True Compassion. In that illumination is revealed the wonderful truth: the Buddha Nature sits serenely within the seemingly empty Shrine, uncreated, undying—“Love beyond our wildest dreams.”