Episode Details

I am currently spending some time with this beautiful teaching poem, Affirming Faith in Mind as part of Autumn Ango through ZCO. As I was reading it this week, I thought about how would I summarize this teaching in one sentence. I came up with:

Everything’s Included on the Path!

Everything is included.

Maybe it seems too simple, too obvious. And yet, how often are we looking outside of our experience for satisfaction, the answer, some-thing-else.

How could it be that our doubt, fear, the wars and violence we bear witness to, as well as the love, pain, empathy, grief, sadness we feel is part of awakening?

That anything the mind thinks, or the body feels. Not just the good feelings, the spiritual thoughts—but everything. Everything is included, is an expression of the Awakened Heart. Is liberation itself.

If everything is included. What does that mean for our living? For our practice?

Maybe best not to try to make meaning of it. But to practice, to live with this inquiry. For faith is something we discover through our embodiment.

So we can ask, we can invite—Can I practice here? With these emotions? In this relationship? In this political environment? With this activation?

When I am triggered or hurting—what does practice look like, where can I find refuge?

Sometimes we imagine that if our meditation or dharma practice was “working” we would get immediate relief from the challenging emotion, the pain, the difficult belief. Or we would have the answer about how to respond to the complex relational and societal patterns we are a part of. Though sometimes astonishingly this does happen. I find that practice often offers a little more space, to be with and recognize things as they are.

Practicing the all-inclusive heart can take many forms.

At this time of year in the Zen Buddhist tradition we have rituals for turning towards the monstrous, neglected, wayward, confused, unruly energies in ourselves and the world—energies that we are often trying to control, get-in-line or banish.

One Hundred Demons Night Parade

At Mud Lotus Sangha on Sunday night we did a practice of the 100 Demons Night Parade. It was inspired by a scroll that the 17th Century Zen Master, Hakuin Zenji painted. The 100 Demons Night Parade or Hyakki Yagyo is a procession of the supernatural from Japanese folklore, that artists would often attempt to depict. It is said that Hakuin allowed his inner demons to take form and join this other worldly night parade.

So we drew our demons, inner enemies, monsters, hungry ghosts—as a practice and way of expressing inner thoughts/feelings through art. Many people remarked that what feels scary or frightening inside—actually looked scared on paper. Others said that they recognized that all their demons seemed connected around a fundamental belief or feeling.

We taped our pictures on the wall. It felt easy in that form to accept and love these creatures—that represented our challenges, fears, pains and struggles, the parts of ourselves that at times feel difficult to love. They were cute, awkwardly fearsome, sad and lonely beings.

What is a demon, anyway?

The 12th Century Tibetan Yogini Machig Labdron defines a demon as “whatever appears to hinder liberation—awakening to true nature.”

What hinders awakening? Can anything hinder awakening?

Yet, sometimes we feel hindered. Sometimes awakening seems 100 demons away.

Machig Labdron categorized these “demons” or apparent hinderances to liberation into four categories.

* Outer Demons—situations and circumstances outside of our control, this includes other people, organizations, institutions, diseases, wars, relationships that we tend to blame or feel burdened by in some way

* Inner Demons—the thoughts, emotions, feelings, sensations, beliefs that we have a tendency to identify with, evade, push away, attempt to control or fight with this