Calling the name of Avalokiteshvara
John Tarrant, Roshi
CALLING ON THE NAME OF AVALOKITESHVARA by John Tarrant Roshi Winter 1991
It is said that, even in hell, if you remember the name or if you call on the name of Avalokiteshvara, you will find freedom.
Avalokiteshvara, as I am sure you know, is the bodhisattva of compassion and insight, who appears in the Heart Sutra. This figure is known under many names. It is our task as students of the Way to realise the insight of Avalokiteshvara for ourselves. This cannot of course be done just by imitating and following along. Fortunately, it can only be achieved by finding our own Way and our own practice. In our own uniqueness lies the great dharma. Keizan Jokin said, "However immensely perse the mountains, rivers and lands and all forms and appearances may be, all of them are in the eye of the Buddha, and you too are standing in the eye of the Buddha." It is not simply that you are standing there: the eye has become you. The eye of the Buddha and the eye of Avalokiteshvara have become everyone”s whole body, each of us standing tall. This enlightenment needs to be refreshed and rediscovered in each person and in each generation, in each inpidual of each generation and in each moment of each of our lives. There is a path into it and today I would like to talk a little about some of the guideposts on that path.
I have been very interested lately in the interaction between character and insight. Character was very much a concern in old China when the koan curriculum was being developed, and I think belongs with Zen. Yamada Roshi used to speak about Zen as the perfection of character and when I looked at myself and my friends who were longtime Zen students I found that hard to believe; but I think I begin to get some glimmerings of what he meant. He certainly did not mean an easy piety. And you may also remember that Yamada Roshi used to emphasise insight a great deal, and was known for his relentless pursuit of enlightenment when he was a student. Insight is the dazzling, clear, eternal awareness of the presence of Avalokiteshvara in each moment: the presence of all moments and all places in this moment and this place. So that is very simple, really. That one is solved, I guess; we know about insight.
Character is something else. Character is I think more related to time, and grows and develops with a sort of reptilian slowness. And insight cannot go bad on you: either you have insight or you do not. I guess you can lose insight through bad living or not maintaining your practice, but really insight is a fairly clear matter. The realm of character is different, though. Character does change; we can become more whole and occasionally we meet some people who become less whole. A flaw in their character gradually takes them over. I think of character as being primarily the willingness to be with, to read, to listen to, the flow of things that we often call the Tao, for short. It is the willingness not to separate from the current of life. And with this goes the ability to experience our own lives and the willingness to live our lives fully, without resisting our experience. This takes courage, equanimity, steadfastness, honesty. And I think it really helps if we are willing to be foolish a lot. There is always that noticing with a sense of wonder that is important and helpful in the character work.
An old Sung dynasty Chinese teacher said this: "If you want to investigate this path all the way, you must make the determination firm and unbending until you reach enlightenment." (That”s the insight side of it.) "Afterwards it is left to nature whether you experience calamity or distress, gain or loss, and you should not try unreasonably to escape them." I think this is very interesting …
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