It’s About Time

 

10.21.2022 IT’S ABOUT TIME The new Fall 2022 issue of Buddhadharma celebrates our twentieth anniversary. Overall, this issue is about time. Specifically, it’s about this moment in time and the recognition that Buddhism is, and always has been, in motion. I once saw a series of maps drawn in 1944 by Harold Fisk, a US Army Corps of Engineers cartographer, that illustrated the many changes in the course of the Mississippi River over tens of thousands of years. The maps are multicolored to show each course; layer after layer of twists and turns intersect with the current course of the river but also stretch far to each side of it, exploring and then abandoning areas the river of today can no longer touch. The images are beautiful and overwhelming, too much for the mind to hold. On the surface, they show the past, but what they really do is demonstrate how the present is part of a continuum — ten thousand years from now, today’s river will be just another line of color. In June of this year, leaders and practitioners from across the United States gathered at the Garrison Institute and online for a conference on the “Future of Buddhism.” A collaboration between the Lenz Foundation and Naropa University, the conference brought practitioners from across lineages, generations, and backgrounds to explore both the challenges facing Buddhism today and the opportunities it might embrace going forward. This twentieth anniversary issue takes up some of those same questions. It opens with a look back by Barbara O’Brien at the last twenty years in Western Buddhism — on one hand, just the blink of an eye, and on the other, two of the most exciting and volatile decades in Buddhism’s history. From there, you’ll find five conversations around issues that matter, and will continue to matter: tradition, power, engagement, plurality, and the role of the dharma in meeting the climate crisis. This is not a “best-of” issue. Rather, it is a snapshot of the river of Western Buddhism right now. It is a look at where these conversations are and a hint of where they might be headed, a combination of teaching and commentary, groundedness and possibility. For readers of Buddhadharma over the last twenty years, this issue may feel like a reminder of how far we’ve come. I hope so. But more than that, I hope it will feel like a dip of your toes into this powerful current of our practice, of our shared history as practitioners. Below, you’ll find three pieces of my personal favorite teachings that Buddhdharma has published. We’re here for just a moment. Let’s get our feet wet. —Koun Franz, Editor, Buddhadharma

Your Liberation Is on the Line “No one who has ever touched liberation could possibly want anything other than liberation for everyone,” says Rev. angel Kyodo williams. She shares why we must each fully commit to our own path to liberation, for the benefit of all. It’s an inside-out job — we need both paths. We need self and we desperately need other. We need to understand the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to know. We need to understand the parts that society tells us we should have shame about. We need to understand our history and our context and then live through that, live into that truth. We don’t have to know the answers. We just have to choose to live into the truth. And the truth, both universal and ever-unfolding from moment to moment, is not easy for most of us to apprehend. We want it to be clear, to be fixed. We want to have a neat, packaged answer. We want somebody to come and give us the answer, to tell us what to do, so we can abdicate our responsibility, give up our agency, and hope for the best. But you don’t get to walk a path of liberation and not be accountable. First and foremost, liberation is about choosing to be 100 percent accountable for who and how you are. And if that sounds like a really big job that you are going to be working at for the rest of your life, it is. There are other things you could be doing with your time. That’s fine — you just don’t get to say you’re walking a path of liberation.

You Are Already Enlightened Guo Gu, a longtime student of the late Master Sheng Yen, presents an experiential look at the Chan practice of silent illumination. Self-attachment, vexations, and habitual ten­dencies run deep. So practitioners must work hard to experience enlightenment again and again until they can simply rest in mind’s natural state. The key is to practice diligently but seek no results. By practicing in this way, our life gradually becomes completely integrated with wisdom and compassion, and even traces of “enlighten­ment” vanish. We are able to offer ourselves to everyone, like a lighthouse, helping all those who come our way, responding to their needs with­out contrivance. This is the perfection of silent illumination.

You’re Ready Enough Wherever you find yourself, says Pema Khandro, that’s the starting point of the bodhisattva path — all you need to do is take that first step. The mind-set of samsara is that we can only be happy if we are someone other than our present self. Someday, somewhere, somehow — different. Oh, the things we would do if we were smarter, richer, thinner, if we had more knowledge or better opportunities. This is the clinging to a self that generates dukkha, or pervasive unsatisfactoriness. Dukkha often manifests in negative self-images and accompanying fantasies of a better me. Buddhism, by offering an alternate focal point, can shift our primary focus from this futile pursuit of our ideal selves. Instead of trying to be perfect, we focus on purifying our underlying motivations so that we can wake up, show up, and act with enlightened intention — right here, right now, just as we are.

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