Three Dharma Frags

dharma: law; teaching; the way things are.


Masahide’s Famous Haiku

My prayer is always the same. I ask for clarity.

I’ve come to understand that everything is characterized by impermanence. This is not something we often acknowledge, despite the evidence that surrounds us.

I hold this awareness alongside the knowledge that, as it says in the Samanthabhadra Sutra, we are all adrift on the ocean of karmic hindrances.

Mizuta Masahide was a haiku poet from the samurai class during the Tokugawa Shogunate. In 1688 he suffered a catastrophic economic setback when his storehouse burned. He wrote:
Barn’s burnt down—
Now I can see the moon.

It is said that Masahide became quite poor following this disaster, but I’m not sure it mattered much to him. There was an exchange that took place when his storehouse burnt down. Something was taken away, but then something was given to him.


A Discourse on Emptiness heard in the late afternoon, driving west on Highway 88 in upstate New York

Sandy is driving. I ask him about Madyamika Buddhism.

These ideas are 1,500 years old, but they are still alive, they’re still vital.

From a Buddhist point of view, there’s nothing to hold onto. Suffering is due to our attachments, our clinging. What would it be like not to cling to anything?

The Madyamika philosophers were interested in exploring the nature of things and ideas. Are there truly existent things? Or is it that things are concepts, beliefs, ideas? And how is it that we become attached to them?

The Prajnaparamita texts are filled with allegories, anecdotes and parable. Nagarguna, who founded the Madyamika School, synthesized ideas from this literature into a systematic philosophy, but he didn’t come to a view or a conclusion. Madyamika philosophy is not about proving anything. It’s about not clinging.

Buddhists argue that the self is based on a comparison of relationships, that it’s an illusion. If you break the idea of self down into its component parts, you see that the parts are also devoid of reality. Emptiness is an extension of the idea of no self. It’s very subtle.

Of course, you can also cling to Emptiness as an idea, which is to misunderstand it. For instance:

A man walks into a store. All the shelves are bare.
‘I have nothing to sell,’ the shopkeeper says.
‘I’ll have that,’ the guy says.

It is a beautiful spring day. The landscape flashes past us.


Report to Tanya following a two-day retreat at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center

first day:
Mind cloudy, thoughts scattered, body in pain.

second day, 10:50 a.m., fourth sitting:
Mind settled enough to glimpse the Dharma-gate of repose and
bliss. For an hour I am very clear, empty. I have the
properties of light.

The text says, Once this is grasped, you are like the dragon
when it gains the water, like the tiger when it enters the
mountain.

This is why I am here.

An hour later, everything shifts. Pain whooshes back, rattles
down on me like that monsoon rain off the Gulf of Siam that
hit Bangkok at 4 o’clock in the afternoon six years ago. You
remember? The wind rose suddenly, a metal sign slammed into
the street in front of us, followed by fierce rain. Weren’t
you and your sister standing with me under the temple gate as
the water sluiced off the trough above us?

The teacher tells me, Keep your practice steady. Don’t judge
It. Don’t grasp.

The text says, Progress is not a matter of far or near. But
if you are confused, mountains and rivers block the way. I
humbly say to those who study the mystery, Don’t waste time!

I saw birds glide over the building & on out over the lake in
the early evening when I left.

bliss
repose