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On the Last Night of the Seven Day Retreat
Clare Ellis was the Moktak Master for the Seven Day YMJJ retreat this March at Chogye International Zen Center of New York.
There was a moment on Thursday night, after a conflict I’d had was resolved, when I had an interesting experience while we were sitting.
The light that shines on the altar was reflecting on the floor and shining in my eyes. As a momentary reaction to my vague discomfort, I lifted my head and just let the light wash over my face. I lowered my eyes so I could see the floor and I immediately felt more upright. In fact I felt completely free of tension in my back and the rest of my body. I felt just like a statue of the Buddha! That was very pleasing, but I immediately felt “Oh, dear. This is a dangerous direction to be going in.” Then I thought, “Well, really it’s not so bad - we are each supposed to be Buddha. Maybe I feel it’s hubristic because I was raised in a Western tradition.”
This somehow gave me a new perspective on something I had been wondering about: What is the difference between having a religion with a God and a religion without a God? This question had arisen earlier out of a conversation we had at a Dharma Teachers In Training study group: Is samadhi the same as God? Steve Cohen, JDPSN remembered that Dae Soen Sa Nim often said that samadhi can be called God (and some other things), but Zen Master Wu Kwang told us Dae Soen Sa Nim would say that kind of thing when he was giving a Zen answer; at other times he distinguished between religions in which you look to a God and religions in which you look into your own mind.
It still seemed to me that God and samadhi might be different ways of describing the same thing. To experience God or samadhi you must transcend an artificial boundary. Either you believe in a God out there and then find God and God’s love in yourself, or you practice looking into your mind and ask, “What am I? What am I?” and chip away at the separation you make between yourself and the outside world. Either way, don’t you have a glimpse of great love and how we are not separate? And in either case don’t these glimpses, whatever religion brings them on, inspire people to try to help others?
But at the Thursday evening sitting, when I had that feeling of sitting like the Buddha, I felt grateful for his down-to-earth, empirical approach. He gave us a demonstration of what anyone can do to find relief from suffering - how we can sit still to center ourselves and to create a safe place for meditation, observation, and questioning so that we can better understand ourselves and others. And he gave us the encouragement that we all have Buddha-nature. This reminds me of something Zen Master Soeng Hyang said during her speech at the Installation Ceremony. She was talking about the Buddha’s teaching that we already have what we’re looking for and what a remarkable understanding that is, how generously and intelligently he shared it, and how it’s lasted for 2500 years. “This idea stuck,” she said, “Thank God!”
by Clare Ellis