Creating the World
Photo by Greg Rakozy
“When I took my first breath, my world was born with me.”
— Koso Uchiyama
To face this world is to face ourselves. In this talk Zuisei explores what it means to create this world and how we might face it in spaciousness and love. From the cultural creation myths of the Aztecs and Christians, quantum physic’s Qbism, and the Zen teaching on the worlds that are born and die in every breath, Zuisei shares the many ways we understand the creation of a world that is you in me. How might we face each other here, now? To do this, we might take up the Four Bodhisattva Vows, possible and impossible.
This talk draws on the the teachings of Zen Masters Thich Nhat Hanh and John Daido Loori Roshi, as well as authors Ocean Vuong, Trabian Shorters and the poet Aida Limón.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard. See below for transcript.
Transcript
Transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
“When I took my first breath, my world was born with me, and when I die, my world will die with me.”
— Kosho Uchiyama's Opening the Hand of Thought*
Last week someone asked me what this quote by the Zen teacher Kosho Uchiyama means. When I took my first breath, my world was born with me, and when I die—when I leave the world—the world will leave with me. It means that the world and I are co-creating ourselves moment to moment, to moment. If you think about it, [this quote] raises an interesting question: If during zazen we stop creating, however briefly, does that mean that in the depth of stillness the world ceases to be? If that's the case, what does that mean about the world? What is the world? If the world ceases to be when I create it, what does this mean about me as the creator? If I'm creating a world, and you're creating a world, are these the same, or are they different?
I was reading about a relatively new theory in quantum physics called Qbism. It's actually spelled Q, capital B, -ism. It says, essentially, that reality is subjective. There's nothing that exists independently of my individual personal experience and interpretation. This is the opposite of realism which says reality does exist regardless of my interpretation of it, regardless of my own existence. If Qbism is true, and really, if what Buddhism says is true—that I'm creating a world and you're creating a world and the worlds are in some way different because we are different beings—then how can these worlds exist simultaneously? What's their meeting point? I remember those Venn diagrams from school, the overlapping circles. Maybe, a healthy relationship, romantic or otherwise, is that slice where they overlap. It’s that meeting point, that intersection, between those two sets, those two circles. In that slice are all the things that we have, not just in common—they are the things that are our world, our shared world. Everything outside our shared world encompasses all the things that I need to work to make space for about your world. Right? So, in order to live together, I have to find a way to accept, or at the very least make space for, everything that is outside of my world. So, maybe practice is really drawing a circle around those two or five or a dozen circles. It's containing the whole thing or getting rid of the container.
If you think of our trajectory as human beings and how we view the world, there has been a pretty consistent movement towards realism, towards rationality and empiricism. [It's] not just in science but also in religion. I've been speaking a little bit about Secular Buddhism because I've been reading about it and speaking to people who practice it. It really is a movement away from mysticism, from metaphysics, from anything that we cannot measure or prove with our own experience within the teachings. In itself, that's not unreasonable. In the age of fake news and alternative facts, with so much misinformation, I don't think it's unreasonable for us to crave some solid ground and to want something that is true and verifiable—something that I can rely on when everything else seems so unreliable and uncertain, something that doesn't depend on my beliefs, on my feelings, or on things that are constantly changing. Then how is it that someone like Uchiyama can say with such conviction that the world is born with me and that the world dies with me? Isn't that a very me-centered view? That can't be what he means. So, what does he mean? Which world is born and dies with me? And, if you take just a single thing of this world, this cushion I'm sitting on, for example, it exists, no question about it. I'm sitting on it. I would argue that the question is not whether it exists or not, but how? How does it exist? Why should this matter to you and me beyond a philosophical exploration?
In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth. And the earth was without form, and void. And darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God saw the light, and it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters." And God made the firmament, divided the waters, which were under the firmament, from the waters which were above, and it was so.
It's a well known story, an oft-told story, across not just one but at least three traditions, a creation story. Except each one of us also has a creation story, usually more than one. Based on the stories, our world comes into being. In the beginning, God created me and you—your wants, my hopes, your silences, my words. Worlds that collide often but not always, and they don't have to. We know that, as practitioners, we know that.
I was listening recently to a podcast with Ocean Vuong. I was struck by his magnificent use of language. That's really the only way to describe it. I would say that he is careful to the point of reverence about how he speaks. He said, "We say the future is in our hands, but really, the future is in our mouths." What he meant was that the future is in our words, in our stories. I would say this is true, both for the spoken word and the written word, but of course, also for thought. We're telling stories all the time—all the time. Once again, when we take a step back, sit down, turn inward, and stop telling a story, then what kind of world is that? In this very well known creation story, there's a single male being, bringing the world into existence, dividing dark from light, the waters from the waters, woman from man. But really, who is God? What is God? There's a koan about that: When the world was created, what was God, the Creator, like? Of course, you could also ask, Who created God?
There's a number of creation myths. The Aztec myth, for example, is really all conflict and violence: The earth goddess, Cōātlīcue, is sweeping a temple. A ball of feathers falls on her, and she miraculously becomes pregnant. Prior to this she had given birth to 400 sons, who were the stars, and to a single daughter, Coyolxāuhqui. Coyolxāuhqui becomes enraged when she finds out that her mother is pregnant and expected to give birth to Huītzilōpōchtli, god of the sun. She didn't mind the 400 sons before but, for some reason, the son—the sun—she minds. She convinces her 400 siblings to kill mom. As the battle is beginning to rage, Cōātlīcue gives birth to Huītzilōpōchtli. He comes out like the Buddha was said to have come out—fully formed and from his mother's side. He comes out, sword in hand, fighting. He cuts off his sister's head, throws it up into the sky, and that's why we have the moon.
I was really feeling that as I was reading this story. I was really feeling that creation coming out of destruction, coming out of conflict, coming out of jealousy. Then I thought, This isn't just a myth. Think of a time in your life when that was true, when something came out of death, of destruction, a time when something was destroyed, perhaps irrevocably, making room for something else that, until then, was unimagined. [Think] of the pain and, also, the wonder of that. It is here in the unimagined that we deal, we Buddhist practitioners. It really is in the unimagined, the impossible, that we move and create.
That's really what I want to stress today. It's what I want you to get excited about. I am unapologetically heading a campaign to bring back the mystical to Buddhism. I don't think I have to because it is still in plenty of places and ways of teaching. However, there are many, many ways in which it has been excised. There are many more places where it is seen now as not relevant or necessary, and I beg to differ.
Earlier in the week I wrote that the Four Bodhisattva Vows were not always written like this:
Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them.
Desires are inexhaustible, I vow to put an end to them.
The dharma s are boundless, I vow to master them.
The Buddha Way is unattainable and I vow to attain it.
I gave a talk some years ago in which I shared that prior to the sixth century in China, these [vows] were very closely tied to the Four Noble Truths. They read like this:
I vow to enable people to be released from the truth of suffering.
I vow to enable people to understand the truth of the origin of suffering.
I vow to enable people to peacefully settle down in the truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering.
I vow to enable people to enter the cessation of suffering, that is nirvana.
The Buddha himself spoke about the Four Noble Truths saying that the first truth is suffering is to be understood. The second is that the root of suffering—thirst or desire—is to be abandoned. The third is that the cessation of suffering is to be realized. And the fourth is that the path to the cessation of suffering should be practiced. In fact, in the early sutras they're not called the Four Noble Truths, they're called the Four Tasks. There is something that you need to do: to understand suffering, to abandon desire, thirst, and craving, to realize that you can put an end to suffering, and then to walk that path right to make it real.
Now, is this true for you? Do you think it's actually true? Is it actually possible for you to put an end to suffering? Someone asked me recently why I use the word liberation as opposed to enlightenment. I would say that it's because in recognizing the power of words, I use the term that most directly expresses what I want. I don't want to suffer, I don't want you to suffer. So I'm doing everything I can to live my life in such a way that you and I will be liberated. That's really, ultimately, what I want—liberation.
Thich Nhat Hahn's wording of the Four Bodhisattva Vows is characteristic of him. They are much more directive:
However innumerable beings are I vow to meet them with kindness and interest. However inexhaustible the states of suffering are I vow to touch them with patience and love.
However immeasurable, the Dharma is our I vow to explore them deeply.
However incomparable the mystery of interbeing I vow to surrender to it freely.
That's an interesting one:I vow to surrender to interbeing freely. They seem so much more doable, not at all impossible. I often tell the story of how Daido Roshi would say that it's their very impossibility that gives them their power:
Sentient beings are numberless. It's impossible to save them all, but I vow to do it.
Desires are inexhaustible. It's not possible to put an end to them.
Infinite dharmas, boundless dharmas cannot be framed. How could you master them?
The Buddha way is unattainable, by definition, you cannot attain it.
As he would speak, he would just get more and more riled up. He'd get louder and louder, and then he would just burst into a song from The Man of La Mancha, “Impossible Dream.” He would say, “It's impossible and I vow to do it." It's impossible, and I will do it with all of my heart, all of my mind, all of my being. With every ounce of my intent, my courage, and my energy, I vow to save, to end, to master, to attain. I vow to do the impossible because the possible is too small. The possible is what has you and me trapped—always has. The possible is the mind that hustles in this neverending grind, work, consumption, pleasure, pain. The possible is the mind that says, I can't, I won't, I'm too busy, too tired, too scared. The possible is the system that holds up samsara. That is why I feel we need the impossible, the unmeasurable, the unexplainable. It's why we need a new system, like Cynthia Bourgeault saying we need a new operating system.
The thing is that more and more thinkers who don't necessarily see themselves as religious are understanding this as well. I don't know if any of you listen to that podcast On Being with Krista Tippett. The most recent one is with Trabian Shorters. She calls him a visionary, a social thinker. He was originally a tech person, and he invented this term, asset framing. He basically says that in order for us to thrive as human beings, we have to stop looking at our lives and at ourselves from the point of view of deficiency, of what we lack. On the podcast they discussed how implicit bias, for example, is based on what he calls pattern forming. The mind is immediately making patterns. He says that it happens so fast, it's faster than thought. It's at the level of the nervous system. So, in order to understand a group of people, I'm going to fit them into a certain pattern. If I continue to reinforce that pattern, then that's how I see them over time. That is how I speak about them over time, that is how I act towards them over time. He was saying how describing communities of color as at risk, impoverished, etc., this language, simply reinforces the opposite of asset framing, which I guess would be called deficiency framing.
The author Ocean Vuong basically said the same thing. He said that the language we use for creativity, our creative expression, is all about death. “I killed this.” “I knocked it out of the park.” How many of our metaphors, especially for success, are tied to violence? He says that this matters. It matters that this is our language. What does it say about us as a culture that these acts of creation are brought into being from so much violence and destruction?
Shorters was saying that a good hacker, a good technologist, understands that to hack something well you have to understand the system well enough to make it do something it wasn't designed to do. Then I thought, Oh, the human mind. The human mind is designed, it seems from an evolutionary perspective, to discriminate, to be able to tell friend from foe, mate from food. So much of what we're doing here is to find a way to use mind to transcend mind. At least the mind that says this and that, sky and earth, me and you. We are finding a way to get to a place where we see the sky as Earth, where we see me as you, as Uchiyama has noted. Shorter says we need to magnify humanity. I would humbly say that we need to magnify our view because humanity is already magnified. It's already at capacity, we just don't use it. We just don't use that capacity.
I would just love it if every time you approached your cushion, you thought to yourself, I don't know what's going to happen today. I don't know what my body and mind will show me. Speaking of the cushion itself, instead of seeing it as a piece of stuffed fabric, you saw it as a portal into another realm, which is not different from this one, but it's not the same. If we could see that this is how it really is, meditation retreats would be packed. We wouldn't have to sell them. People would be signing up for sesshin left and right. I think that is like the best kept not secret. It's just hiding there in plain sight. Instead, people spend hundreds of dollars to do ayahuasca, and they get the quick hit. Maybe you get to the same place. I don't know, not having done it. Being a little prejudiced, I feel there's a way that lasts. A way that shows you a whole world being born, right here in this moment, and dying, and being born again. Imagine the possibilities or the impossibilities. So, instead of thinking, I have to have to get in my 10 minutes of sitting today or my half an hour, my hour. Today I'm really distracted, I'm really scattered, rather, approach it with that kind of wonder, and understand that with that breath that you just took, your world was born, and as you exhale, the world died. Now, it’s being born again.
Only when you thoroughly understand this will everything in the world settle as the self pervading all things. As Buddhists, this is our vow or the direction we face. In other words, we vow to save all sentient beings so that this self may become even more itself. Kosho Uchiyama:
We vow to do the impossible, to let go of this self and everything else that gets in a way so that this self can become more itself.
This is liberation. It's really so that you can become more you. Wouldn't that be nice? You—unbound. Bringing all those threads together, there's that quote he says at the end, You are within me, and I'm just facing myself. In other words, you exist within myself, and it is to that you that I direct myself. That is what vow is: to direct ourselves to the many you-s in me, and to know, as we do that, that we are facing ourselves.
Those of you who choose to work in the world, who teach, who work with people touching their bodies, change the world from the outside in. Here we are also changing the world, from the inside out. Both are needed, but I think the most important thing is understanding that we're actually never failing to face ourselves. Anger, jealousy, self-doubt, mistrust, hatred are only possible in separation. They're only possible when I'm separate from me, and I'm separate from you. When I step back, when I look around, when I measure what everyone else is doing, everyone else has, when I focus on what I don't have, what may be taken away from me, what I can get, and what I need to protect, what I need to keep—then the possible takes over and it is not liberating. So let me end with this part of a poem from “A New National Anthem” by Ada Limon.
...that song that’s our birthright,
that’s sung in silence when it’s too hard to go on, that sounds like someone’s rough fingers weaving
into another’s, that sounds like a match being lit
in an endless cave, the song that says my bones
are your bones, and your bones are my bones,
and isn’t that enough?
Explore further
01 : Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama
02 : On Being with Krista Tipett: Ocean Vuong, A Life Worthy of Our Breath
03 : On Being with Krista Tipett: Trabian Shorters, A Cognitive Skill to Magnify Humanity
04 : The Four Bodhisattva Vows with Vanessa Zuisei Goddard
05 : Understanding the I with Vanessa Zuisei Goddard