Heart/Mind of Darkness – Sutra Study Class Session 9

In a short article I wrote for Tricycle magazine some years ago, I characterized Ananda’s questioning of the Buddha as “bitching” but it wasn’t so much complaining but a kind of impatient badgering: “Come on, World-Honored One, for the sake for all present and future beings, don’t leave me hanging about what is going on in your mind when your face is shining so brightly. What’s this ‘buddhas contemplating each other’ stuff really mean?”

 

I think perhaps the Buddha was at a loss for words – human language seemed so inadequate to describe a state that he experienced so deeply. So he needed to go back and retrace his footsteps to see what led him to that experience. It’s strictly my opinion but I think the Buddha is telling Ananda the story of Dharmakara as a way to look back on his own journey.

 

At the February 21, 2023 session, I wanted to explore more about how the phrase Nyo ji tō chi “You – self – must – know” must have struck Akegarasu when it jumped out at him in the Larger Sutra. First of all, I want to clarify that the self-examination we are talking about in Buddhism is not the “who am I?” identity search of our teenage years. That time was about discovering the unique combinations of traits that gave us a sense of “myself”- someone related to but still very different from my parents, siblings, schoolmates etc.

 

The “what is the self?” question in Buddhism is to look at that part of our mentality that Shinran called “snakes and scorpions.” In the session I referred to it as the reptilian brain as I’ve heard some teachers say, but that early evolved part of our grey matter might be more about very primitive reflexes and functions. So here I’ll refer to it as the “dark heart/mind” since the Buddha called his self “Avidya” (not-clear) when he confronted it in his meditation under the Bodhi Tree. I have a feeling real reptiles are a lot nicer than us humans are to each other.

 

[Some reptiles from Wikipedia]

 

That dark heart/mind is our desire to protect and promote ourselves and to see other beings as threats or doormats. That is the heart/mind Kiyozawa saw so disturbingly in himself. Even though on the outside he seemed like a gentle prude, solving math problems as his entertainment, in his writings he sees his lechery and aggressiveness. He recognized that clinging to one’s idea of self was a big problem because that idea has to be constantly defended and pumped up. The way to keep cracking open that clenched fist is to be reminded that our real life is nothing but the flow of causes and conditions, the coming together and coming apart of various elements. To be reminded of that is to let go and let oneself fall down (raku-zai) into the flow of the Power Beyond Self.

 

In his poem “Who Am I?” (pp.  196-7 in Shout of Buddha) uses the same Japanese phrase “Jiko to wa nanzo ya?” that Kiyozawa used in his diary entry of October 1898. In the verses, he says he thought his self was those elements we usually identify as our own – thoughts, experiences, feelings, deeds etc. But in each verse he says it’s a mistake to see one’s self as those elements because “I am not such a limited self” – he is those things but also not limited to those things. The mistake is made when we cling to those aspects as being our identity, when those aspects can change, disappear and reappear in the flow of our lives. Akegarasu echoes the Buddha’s birth cry of “I alone am most noble” – the recognition that my life, as well as each and every life, is to be respected in its uniqueness, different in each moment. So what Akegarasu calls “this indescribable self” is the real life he is connected to and flowing with – in other words, A-mita-yus “un-bounded-Life” (aka Amitabha “immeasurable Light).

 

As I’ve pointed out in other occasions, the last line of the English translation is a bit off. “Truth is here” sounds okay but the actual phrase Shinjitsu no seikatsu o shite yuku no de arimasu, can be literally translated as “Going with the life-activity of reality.” There’s yuku (iku) 行くthat indicates going forth, like the last part of the Heart Sutra, “ga-te ga-te.” Somehow “truth is here” sounds too static to me and I want people to know how dynamic the last line of the poem is.

 

So here we see the Dharmakara story through several lenses – Shakyamuni communicating to Ananda, Honen conveying the Pure Land teachings to Shinran, and Kiyozawa waking Akegarasu up to what each of our lives really is. All the teachers are telling us to be aware of the flow of reality (“Amida”) and not get stuck thinking we are the “gotta get mine while the getting’s good” individual driven solely by the dark heart/mind. In other Buddhist presentations, there’s an overcoming of that dark heart/mind by our own efforts (e.g. “removing dust from the mirror”) but in Jodo Shinshu, we don’t get rid of that mind but we are shown that the Power Beyond Self is the true driving force of our life.