Way of Oneness: A Sangha Podcast

Guided Meditation on Interdependence

Hello everyone,

 

I have gotten behind in my recording schedule and I am working on getting back in the groove.  So here is a guided meditation that I wrote for our Summer Retreat in the Uinta Mountains. This meditation was inspired by a book written by Hideo Yonezawa where he talks about when we breathe we have no control over it - we just breathe and with each breath, we touch the inconceivable. 

So the idea behind this meditation is to help cultivate our awareness of our interconnectedness to all things and through that awareness realize how much we are supported every day by the world around us. And this awareness opens us up to a profound and transformative gratitude. 

 

Transcript

In this practice, we’ll be cultivating awareness of our interdependence –

 

“During quietness, you breathe together with the whole world. We breathe as one.” – Gyomay Kubose Sensei

GUIDED MEDITATION

 

Breathing in, Breathing out

Feel the air filling your lungs

as you breathe in and out feeling the air fill your lungs,

Honor them for allowing you to breathe.

Now think the of trees and plants and all the processes that make breathing possible.

Acknowledging your utter dependence on them for being here right now

Breathing in, Breathing out – be aware of your breath, aware that you are breathing in unison with all living brings –

Now say to yourself,

With each breath I become awarethat the very air I receive into my lungs has been shared

by trees, and flowers,

by bees and bears,

by wolves and whales.

Let us now sit together in this awareness

Now be aware of your breath

feel it fill your lungs

notice the wave-like motion of your breathing

Be aware of how your very life has been, gifted to you,

by the stars that make up the very elements of your body,

by the earth's ocean,

that lives in your in your blood,

gifted to you by soil,

moss and light.

Now sit gently in this awareness.

Breathing in

Breathing out

Feel the air coming into your lungs

Now say to yourself

I am so grateful for all the causes and conditions

allowing me to breathe and share breath with all living things,

in this very moment

Now while centering your attention on your breathing

opening your heart

Say thank you to the stars,

the sea, to the moss and light.

For each inhale and exhale.

Now Breathe in,

Breathe out

Feel the air coming through your nose past your lips,

feel it filling your lungs.

Bring to your awareness of how your very life has been, gifted to you,

by all your ancestors.

Acknowledging that you are breathing in the very same air, that all your ancestors both

human and non-human down through the lineage of time

– each sharing the same breath,

their first breath, and their last breath.

Now with each breath say to your self,

“I am breathing in the first and last breath of my grandparents,

Great-grandparents, even back 100 generations,

The same air that filled their lungs is now filling mine.

Their first breath and their last breath gifted to me.

I now sit in that awareness.”

Now with each breath be aware that the earth.

You are breathing in the same air of the lineage of all our teachers even back to the

Buddha himself, breathing in and out, first and the last breath of the Buddha –

With each inhale and exhale the Buddha breathes through you

Now – In this still moment as your breath in and out

feel the whole world breathing with you breathing as one.

Feel that endless connection that supports your existence.

Sit in that awareness.

 

 

Now slowly open your eyes

 

 

The Grace of Parents and Other People

Kakuyo Sensei continues this podcast with ideas of the Four Graces of Won Buddhism and looking how Naikan reflection relates to this grace. 

 

Excerpt

 

"Gratitude is born out of the realization of how much is given, up until now we have not been able to see the abundance. The small egoic-self’s constant craving and its relentless state of perceived scarcity is finally permeated by the reality of so much grace; by a new understanding of the oneness of life. This is only magnified when we realize that a similar grace surrounds us because of the many others that support us."

Oneness and the Four Graces of Buddhism

Kakuyo Sensei continues talking about the Path of Gratitude. In this podcast episode, he shares his thoughts on oneness and the Four Graces of Won Buddhism and how we can cultivate our awareness of our absolute interdependence will all things. 

 

From the podcast

"So understanding the truth of our interdependence our mutual resonance as Soga Ryojin writes, our very being is relational; this is oneness – and our natural response to oneness is an appreciative humility. We become aware of a daily grace – something that is beyond self-power, self-conceit – an inherent gift, something beyond us that is also us. The whole, the one.  These simple insights offer us an invitation to take notice of the grace we receive every day."  - Kakuyo Sensei

 

Kakuyo Sensei on the Four Graces of Won Buddhism

 

"Contemplation and practice with each of these graces open us up to the reality of our interdependence or as the Buddha taught Pratītyasamutpāda translated as dependent origination dependent co-arising – and as we reflect on each of these realities, each of these intersections, we begin to cultivate a deep awareness of each of these graces, and by doing so affirming the universal self as our habitual primacy of the small-self begins to dissolve in to the very ground of gratitude."

 

Enjoy the podcast

The Problem with Deserving

In the podcast episode, Christopher Kakuyo Sensei talks about the problem with the ideas of deserving and not deserving, and how we all can aspire to transcend the dualism and suffering inherent in these concepts. 

 

"We love our concepts of deserving and not deserving, it gives us a sense of controlling our worlds., I am not saying that we do not need to “earn” a living or do the things that we need to do to be responsible for our families, what I am saying is that our sense of “deserving” is skewed. "

 

 

This podcast is based on a Dharma talk given at the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship on 7/8/2018

This is not me...

 Over the years we have talked a lot about our stories of self and how these stories are rarely examined, and how our sense of a solid, unchanging self is really a creation of these unexamined stories – today I would like to talk more about this –

As a child I was raised to be a martyr – my mother being Catholic, unconsciously had sewn the book of martyrs deep within her heart and when I came along, into mine also ...it too became my story, a dubious one at best.  Guy Claxton has written, 

 “..consciousness is a mechanism for constructing dubious stories whose purpose is to defend a superfluous and inaccurate sense of self. "

So begins our podcast about our stories of self and our need for introspection, as Haya Akegarasu wrote, to identify which ones are ours and which ones were stolen, borrowed or painted on so we can give them back or scrape them off to touch our true selves.

The Darkness is Your Candle

The title of this podcast comes from a poem by Rumi. “What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.”  Here Kukuyo Sensei shares how darkness is not something the be afraid of, but something to learn from.  He draws on various teachers to share their insights and his in regards to the valuable lessons we can learn from the dark, not the dark that can be tamed by electric illumination - but the wild an unknown parts of ourselves –

Meaningless Meaning, Purposeful Purposelessness

Kakuyo Sensei starts this talk with a quote from his mentor Gyomay Kubose Sensei,

 

“ A reporter from a local newspaper came to our house to interview my wife about the Japanese tea ceremony. This report continually asked, “What is the meaning? What for? Why do you do that? What is the purposes for that?” This kind of question was directed at everything in the making tea – at every gesture, every implement. Without thinking or deliberating, my wife finally replied, “No meaning. Meaningless meaning. It is purposeless purpose.”

– Gyomay Kubose Sensei

 

Kakuyo Sensei reflects on the meaningless meaning and purposeless purpose and how it makes more sense then we might think.

The Need for Quiet

“It’s important to take time to have some quiet moments in our lives, otherwise we get caught up in the busy-ness of always having something going on.” Gyomay Kubose Sensei

 

With this quote, Kakuyo Sensei shares his thoughts on the importance of Quiet in our lives and seeking out silences.

The Grace of Oneness

A talk by Christopher Kakuyo Sensei of the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship.  Many people aren't aware that gratitude and grace are a very important part of the Buddha Way - Grace from a more modernist Pure Land Buddhist view can be seen as the "other-power" that Amida Buddha represents.