Guideline for Spiritual Practice

Dear Friends,

            The basic practice at our center begins with a Zen saying: “Every step of the journey is the journey.” When we founded our center in 2005, we hung this saying at the entrance to encourage all practitioners who come to the center and join our retreats to meditate and reflect on it. Accepting the journey is the first stage of establishing a spiritual ground—the radical perception of practice, throughout the journey of practicing the marvelous teachings of the Buddha. Based upon this perception, all aspects of an individual’s life, such as suffering, happiness, and spirit, are observed and experienced. The following provocative thoughts may help you understand the meanings of this spiritual guideline.

            1. Our Honest Desire:

            The thirst of having happiness and living in happiness is the vital motivation and foundation of our lives and exists for the sake of our lives. It is the most honest and earnest desire of human beings. This thirst of happiness always exists in the innermost and deepest part of each individual heart, whether it is spoken out or just presents itself silently. The truth is, every one of us longs for happiness, wants to live in happiness, and is always ready for happiness, though the personal sense of happiness is observed through a variety of manners. For example, in the mundane life of an ordinary person, growing up he may believe that graduation from a university is happiness, having his dream job is happiness, winning the lottery is happiness, or being with his sweet lover is happiness. Similarly, in spiritual practice, happiness is also experienced in various ways; for instance, to be able to remain in pure meditation for long periods is happiness; remaining undisturbed by cravings, hatred, or delusion is happiness; helping others or providing charitable services is happiness. Generally, the nature and meaning of happiness are perceived according to each unique person and unique situation. Yet, essentially, if your personal life is not happy—even the happy defined by your own concept—then your love, money, fame, and power become a “burden” for you and even “nonsense” to you. That is the reason we all try in various ways, either earthly or spiritually, to look for happiness.

            However, we are not discussing the earthly happiness here, which is often understood as satisfaction of sensual desires or sensual urges of human beings, because such satisfaction is actually an ephemeral happiness always hidden in itself the germs of sadness, worry, grief, and suffering. Moreover, the sensual thirst of human beings is boundless by nature; therefore, there is no full happiness that is able to satisfy or meet the need of the endless desire of humanity. Furthermore, we do not have any super means or prominent policy for us to guarantee that the happiness—as we perceive it—is secure and permanent or that it can last as long as we want it to be. The truth is that everything in our world constantly changes and transforms over the course of time and in accordance with the law of impermanence, such as birth, old age, sickness, and the death of the human body. Actually, the ephemeral happiness or our pleasant feelings of satisfaction for any sensual thirsts may at any time turn into sadness, grief, or suffering in just a moment if they do not ethically arise from the ground of virtuous deeds. Just as in the matrimonial happiness or that of the family life, if true love does not serve as the foundational cohesion, the risk of collapse is constantly evident; accordingly such happiness will sooner or later turn into suffering. Thus, the journey of looking for true happiness of which we are discussing here has nothing to do with the ordinary way of searching for satisfaction for sensual desires; rather, it is basically understood as a way of living peacefully and free from all delusions in the realm of grieves and sufferings. Briefly speaking, we may describe this journey of looking for true happiness as the journey of “establishing the Pure Land in the earthly world,” otherwise known as the journey leading to “the life of Nirvāna in the world,” regardless of who you are and how you are.

However, how can you step forward firmly on the journey when every step of the journey is the journey? This question is what we will discuss here in this spiritual guideline. The most important thing to realize is that, in order to live a life of happiness, you should not sit still in one place, constantly waiting with a dream that someday happiness will come and knock on your door. You must begin a journey moving forward to create actual happiness. Of course, in all journeys looking for true happiness, particularly the happiness of the here and now—the happiness of the present being—you often encounter obstructions. First are the obstructions arising from the inner mind.

            2. Obstructions along the Journey:

            One of the greatest obstructions along the journey for happiness arises when your own thirst for happiness is pushed by the dream of time and inner upset in waiting. In reality, two psychological acmes always appear in front of when seeking happiness: suffering and happiness—you are unstably walking in the middle. This is the practical situation of those who are pursuing happiness. In the deepest part of your heart, you stay attached to the thinking that you are an ordinary person immersed in overloaded sufferings; thus, in order to step into the realm of true happiness or the Pure Land, you may say to yourself that you have to overcome all troubles and suffering—to leave this world of suffering so that you may be able to jump into the Pure Land. Sometimes you may even go further by nurturing the idea that perhaps you may not be able to enter the Pure Land until the day you pass away and that the trip to the Pure Land is possible only with the loving kindness of the Amita Buddha at the moment of death as well as the collection of your own merits from the good deeds you performed during your lifespan; but to your present status, it may do nothing! The reason you carry in mind such a thought is that, based upon the natural consciousness of your distinctive mind, you consider the human world and that of the Pure Land to be totally different from each other, like suffering and happiness; no connection exists between these two worlds. Although such a thought is sincere and honest, it is one sided; therefore, it is itself a huge obstruction that pulls you back to the anguished world instead of pushing you toward the realm of happiness. For this reason, the Zen saying “Every step of the journey is the journey” is the alarm that awakens you to the realization that you are not to wait until the end of the journey to find happiness, but live happiness in every breath of your life instead. In other words, true happiness lies not at the end of the journey, but in every step of the journey.

Consider, for example, when you were eighteen; you may have thought that, after graduation from college or the university, you will have true happiness—release from the hardships of school. In reality, the experience of that happiness does not last long because you then have to face the hardship and the needs from your real life again! You then think that getting a dream job is your priority happiness, but after finding it, the happiness gradually fades away over the course of time due to fatigue and unexpected difficulties. You then think that getting married or having the dream family is happiness, but after building your dream family, your matrimonial happiness also gradually vanishes, leaving room for the worry, sorrow, sadness, and affliction. In such a life, you continue the pattern, moving from desire to desire, dream to dream—houses, cars, love, money, fame, power, etc.,—until the end of life. Eventually, everything turns out to be nothing but a dream! Before you are forced to say the “final farewell” to the world, particularly in the moments of facing all your hidden desires, sicknesses, old age, and death, what can you hold firmly in hands? Or should there be just sickness throughout the long journey that let your dream continue to wander?

Therefore, on the path to spiritual transformation or spiritual practice, you should not trade your own energy for the thinking that something is waiting for you just around the corner, constantly chasing your dreams until the end of life, when you will be reborn in the heaven of the Pure Land or you will complete your spiritual journey, reaching the state of true happiness and free from all delusions and sufferings. Such a way will never happen! The fact is that if you cannot create for yourself a true happiness or even a true sense of happiness right here in this body and this world, then how can you reach the happiness at the end of the long journey? You must keep in mind that “Every step of the journey is the journey.”

            3. Discovering Happiness in Every Step:

            “Experience in every step” is the fundamental practice taught by the Buddha. Buddhist sectarians, from tradition to development, also apply this principle, as a foundation in their everyday practices. An example in meditation may help us understand specific characters of this spiritual principle. We know that the end goal of meditation is to attain inner peace, free from bondages of delusion, and achieve full enlightenment. But to attain absolute enlightenment as the Buddha did, you cannot say that you may practice and complete the noble Path according to a schedule of certain years or lives. The Mahayana sutras tell us that the Buddha himself practiced the noble Path in innumerable lives in the past up to the day He achieved full enlightenment thoroughly. However, gaining the states of peace, happiness, and freedom from delusions at certain levels does not always require you to spend a number of years practicing the noble Path; on the contrary, you may attain that state of blissfulness right in each moment of the present stream of reality—the here and now. For that reason, the Buddha, in the Sutra on Mindful Breathing (Anapanasati sutta, M.118), teaches us not to base our practices on the fruits of sainthood, such as Araha or Boddhisattva; rather, we should base our practices on each breath in and out, each kind of feeling—pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, etc. The same can be said of the Pure Land’s practice.

Here, you should not think that you must recite the Buddha’s name so many millions of times in order to reach (be reborn in) the realm of Pure Land—the ultimately true happiness; instead, you should know whether or not every sound of the Buddha’s name in your chanting is fully completed in a single focus of your mind, awareness, and sincerity. Therefore, to fulfill the “experience in every step,” you must first give up all the psyches of hurry, bustle, and waiting that often appear in your everyday practice and instead put all your efforts wholeheartedly into each breath in and out or each sound of chanting the Buddha’s name. It is important to note that, instead of waiting to someday be reborn in the wholesome and blissful realm, why not live wholesomely and blissfully in the here and now, in every breath of your present being, no matter where you are and how you are? If you cannot practice in such a way, your sincere bustle and waiting, regardless of how earnest they are, would be utterly useless! Indeed, such agitated psyches disturb the inner peace of your life and pull you back to the world of delusions and illusions.

            The concept of “still time”[1] by Sēngzhào (僧肇: 374-414?) is a useful way for you to practice “experience in every step.” We know, as evidence, that the human lifespan is limited to a certain duration, probably from 70 to 100 years. Thus, you should use your time skillfully and not let illusions and imagination invade the life of your present being. Although we know that the universal law of birth, old age, sickness, and death control our lives, in childhood you are not an old man, in adulthood you are also not an old man, and even in your middle years you are not an old man. The fact is that a child would never suddenly become an old man in just second. This is the meaning of still time. For this reason, a wise man would not trade his youthful happiness for anything just because he knows that he will age and die sooner or latter.

Indeed, you should know that as long as you can control your life subjectively and healthily—i.e., your physiological life remains in good condition: you can hear, speak, eat, drink, sleep, walk, stand, lie, and sit naturally and you are fully conscious of what you are doing—all that is the very marvelous happiness of life. Just observe and think deeply about the suffering of persons in sickness; they cannot eat, sleep, hear, see, walk, stand, lie, and sit naturally. Certainly, if we suddenly fall into such a status, how we would suffer! It is truly poor for those who are not conscious of this and trade their own miraculous happiness of the still time for illusions and imaginations, living strenuously with their illusive dreams or with “what they do not have” and unconscious of the great happiness that exists right in the present stream of life, the here and now. We may experience how happy mature persons are when they observe a child acting in his childish ways—dragging the mother’s hand or hugging her legs firmly, for instance. Contrastingly, people will feel something abnormal when they see a child sitting still, washing off his chin and lamenting!

            Similarly, in the journey of spiritual practice, you should not hastily consider that a sinful person is dreadful and blameworthy; what should be really dreadful is when a person has lost his or her consciousness of sin! As long as you are still conscious of sins or mistakes, you are able to maintain the ability to improve yourself or make amends for your mistakes. Therefore, you should not worry about the ultimate goal of the long journey, but the fullness in “experience of every step,” for the connection of each step will complete the whole journey. If you cannot finish each step in practice, certainly you will never reach the end goal of your journey.

            4. Your Real Belongings:

Along the way of spiritual practice, we are often disturbed by the idea of discrimination that the realm of Nirvāna or Pure Land is entirely different from our world and that those realms of infinite blissfulness never exist in this earthly world of humanity. Because of such thinking, you either falsely consider or stubbornly attach to the notion that, in order to reach the realm of Pure Land, one must leave the world in one way or another. But you should remember that Mahayana teachings always focus on building a “mind of Pure Land” and a “person of Pure Land” right on this uneven and impure ground in the saying that “the world of birth and death is the world of Nirvāna” (Samsāra eva nirvānam). If there is no “mind of Pure Land” or “person of Pure Land” here in this profane ground of impurity, then how can we have a “spirit of Pure Land” that will be reborn into the realm of Pure Land after this body is dissolved? We should often remember that, “When the mind is pure then the world of the Buddha is pure too”!

Consider the following example. A building that stores charcoal is called a fire-cellar. That same house, if it keeps pigs, is called sty. If it contains students, it is called a school. If it serves as the place for patients, it is called a hospital. If it provides rooms for meditation practitioners, it is called a monastery. In the same way, if your own physical and mental person fully contains all feelings such as cravings, hatred, animosity, and affliction, then you and your world must suffer (the hell on earth); on the contrary, if you live with four sublime minds—loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity—then you and your world must be peaceful and happy, even though you are not entirely free from all bondages of the world, such as birth, old age, sickness, and death. But, living with the four sublime minds, you actually feed yourself with wholesome energy that is able to cultivate and develop for yourself a “mind of Pure Land” and a “person of Pure Land.” Thus, instead of sitting still in one place, embracing the desire of being reborn in the Pure Land, and dreaming about the far and long journey toward the Pure Land, you should here and now practice “every thought of Pure Land”—i.e., purification of every idea in the stream of your mind. This method of practice is actually not a creation of the author, but was taught by the Buddha thousands of years ago. It is really important that with the “one-pointed mind” you try to attain the Pure Land yourself in each moment of the mind’s stream (ksana) or in each sound of chanting the Buddha’s name; do not let thoughts of cravings, hatred, delusion, pride, etc., invade or disturb your life with a promise about the Pure Land of imagination and illusion. In order to reach the fullness of your one-pointed mind, in the practice of either meditation or chanting Buddha’s name, you must have awareness, alertness, and attention in every thought and every sound of chanting Buddha’s name. In reality, if you do not have an awareness, alertness, and attention in every breath, both in and out, you cannot practice meditation or mindfulness. Similarly, if you do not have an awareness, alertness, and attention in every sound of chanting the Buddha’s name, you cannot completely achieve the state of the one-pointed mind—the fountainhead of purity and blissfulness that carries the character of Nirvāna by nature. This is the principle and the real belongings of your spiritual journey.

Briefly, in order to obtain the life of peace and happiness for both this present life and the future life, you do not need to worry too much about the long journey full of desires, thirsts, and waiting; instead, you should practice “every thought of Pure Land” with all your efforts and devotion. That is to say, you must first build for yourself a “mind of Pure Land” and a “person of Pure Land” and perform every step of Pure Land firmly right on the rough ground of this human world. Here, what you need to know is that the nature of Pure Land is the mind or realm of purity, without being infected by the pollutions of cravings, hatred, or delusions; it is the land full of merits and virtues, the land that transcends all dimensions of imagination and illusion. The Buddha said that, with your one-pointed mind, you may reach your destination in just a moment, which is as short as the flick of fingernail. That is the world of those who live and act ethically in accordance with the Buddha’s way. However, to actually attain the mind of Pure Land and the realm of Pure Land, you must step into a journey of spiritual practice, bearing in mind that “Every step of the journey is the journey.” Wishing you success!