And what I'd like to speak about tonight,
partly because I was so touched by it
in the retreat that just passed, is sanctuary.
And sanctuary's a beautiful word
whose roots go back to the meaning of sacred,
that which is sacred--
and finding that which is sacred
in a culture that can almost be defined as
the absence of the sacred.
Much of popular and kind of commercial,
and the kind of culture that we see in a broad way,
perhaps the disease of the culture
is the absence of the sacred.
What does it mean to find sanctuary
or reconnect with that which is sacred
in a world that has madness and war,
and continuing insanity of racism,
suffering of the prison systems, and the medical systems,
and the ecological devastation,
and the various injustices that we know,
at the same time as the beauty of the world?
I mean, how do we find our way in all of this?
A few lines from Pablo Neruda,
probably the greatest poet in Spanish ever,
speaking about poetry:
It was necessary to go on discovering,
hungry with no one to guide me,
to go on dissolving the iron in the soul
until water finds a voice through your mouth,
to find the strange vocation that seeks you out
and which goes into hiding when we look for it,
a shadow with a broken roof,
and stars shining through its holes.
And I start a little bit with the poetry,
because nobody quite understands
what Neruda's talking about.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
But something underneath that knows, you know,
the broken roof with the sharp stars shining through.
And sanctuary is really central
to Buddhist practice and tradition.
To create sanctuary, which means to create a place,
and the temples and forest monasteries
where I lived in Asia...
To create a place where the heart
is not in the thrall of greed
and hatred and fear and ignorance.
To have a ground where we step out of the
poisons or the confusions or the toxins of the world,
and remember something else that's important for us.
In a way, it's what meditation is--
wherever you put your cushion or your chair
or your seat, it's as if you create a temple,
a sacred ground for yourself.
And in some way, we all need sanctuary,
because the world is hard for each of us in its own way.
And sanctuary means a place to be reconnected
with our true self,
with what the Zen koan says, with who you are
before your parents were born...
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
with the mystery of coming into this body,
into this incarnation.
I mean, how did you get in here?
You have this body, but you don't think
you are this body do you?
You're wiser than that I'm sure.
Plus which as I've said often you look in the mirror
and you notice how it's aged, right,
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
but you don't feel older
and that's because the body ages,
but that's not who you are.
And the witness, the one that sees, the one that knows...
Ajahn Chah, my teacher, called it the one who knows,
looks, and says, Wow, it's getting older, isn't it?
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
But who are you? What is this spirit underneath it all?
And so when we come to meditate together,
or come to do our practice, or when we create a place
of stillness and meditation,
it's a way of being reminded,
of stepping out of the stress and busyness,
and returning to that which is free
in the heart and timeless--
the freedom beyond gain and loss.
I've had the privilege of doing hospice work
at different times over the years, many times,
and when I sit with someone who's dying
there isn't really that much to say.
I mean, sometimes we have a conversation.
The questions that come at the end of life
are pretty simple ones: Did I love well?
Maybe that's the only question.
Maybe did I live fully, did I love?
Maybe they're the same thing somehow,
offer your love to the world.
Not a lot of things to say,
and I might sit and meditate,
or chant with that person and so forth...
But it's not about fixing or doing or making,
it's really about being in the presence of this mystery
into which we are born.
And meeting it with an open heart, beginner's mind--
because when we do, then something of beauty
comes out of us, it wants to come out of us.
And part of what's mysterious and why
a place like Spirit Rock, or wherever you find
as a sanctuary, is important is that there
are two dimensions to our being.
In the Buddhist tradition, they're talked about
the two truths, sometimes the relative and absolute,
which is a very bad translation.
The universal and the personal is a much better translation.
And what it means is you have to remember
your Buddha nature and your zip code.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
And if you forget either one, you're in trouble.
I mean, you do need to know your Social Security Number,
and you have to drive on the right-hand side of the road,
and you have to engage in the world,
and it's a part of living your incarnation,
to do it and do it with some dignity,
and elan and ease, and, you know,
fall down the well, and get in the dungeons
and do that, and pick yourself back up--
but make something in the world, you have to do that.
But you can't make anything of value
if you forget your Buddha nature,
if you forget who you really are
and what you have to offer this world.
In another culture, in another mythological language,
it's called the two agreements,
that when you're born and you come into this world,
you come with a purpose or with a gift, if you will,
with something that's uniquely yours
to bring into this world, and no one has ever brought
the gifts of your particular life
and being into this world before.
And you look around and you say, wow, I got this family,
right, and this neighborhood, and this culture,
and this country, and so forth...
And you realize you sort of have to negotiate
a lot of agreements with them--
what kind of a child you'll be,
and, you know, how you deal with the school,
or the economic system, and so forth...
Those are all called the second agreement--
and you have to find your way through those,
you can't not do it.
But they're not the first agreement.
The first agreement is the agreement
of the spirit, or the soul,
or whatever language you want to use,
that comes into this world with some gift to give,
something to do. And if you do all those other
second agreement things, and get it all together outwardly,
and forget the first one, you're not happy,
you're not satisfied, you're not fulfilled.
It's as if the king or queen has given you
this great errand to do, and you go across the seas,
and you go to this other kingdom,
and you find all these people and adventures
and do all these things--and you forget the main errand
that you went to do. And then you come back,
and they say, well, did you do it?
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
And in some way you have a great errand
as a human being on the Earth,
and as a unique human being, with your particular beauty
and gifts and wisdom, and compassion and understanding--
this is your Buddha nature, to bring out in some fashion.
And without that, you won't be happy.
So what a sanctuary does
is it offers a place to remember in the midst of all this,
to reconnect with what we really know,
and love and care about.
And it doesn't mean it's easy.
Zen master Ryokan, the most beloved
of all the poets of Japan,
he writes, The vicissitudes of this world
are like the movements of the clouds.
50 years of life are but one long dream.
Sparse rain in my desolate hermitage at night,
quietly I clutch my robe
and lean against the empty window,
lonely, dizzy, nothing here but dreams.
So he writes, you know, Are crickets disturbed
by my unexpected visit? Shriek.
Looking up I see the setting sun.
Unbearable loneliness. That's one of his poems.
You know, and then on the other hand he writes,
Spring morning... The children and I
go out to pick vegetables.
What could be more wonderful?
Playing in a garden among the cherry trees,
my sleeves covered with blossoms,
the children laughing...
The flowers fall like snow on the earth.
And Ryokan celebrates all of it.
He takes his sanctuary there,
and he says there's loneliness, and love,
and longing, and connection, and birth and death,
and the ten thousand joys and sorrows.
And in the midst of it, we sense that he is...
that he's found his place in the world,
that his heart is open to the world,
and that he's true to himself in this beautiful way,
that he's free.
So what is your sanctuary?
You can go up into the mountains in the Sierras,
walk by the ocean, take time alone.
Those are the outer forms of sanctuary.
Come to a retreat.
But as Nelson Mandela said, We are not yet free--
we have merely achieved the freedom to be free.
We have all these outward capacities for freedom,
but what does it mean to find this place
of freedom within yourself,
freedom with joy and sorrow, with gain and loss?
The freedom to love in the middle of it all...
And when you come to meditate, the
line from Rumi, he writes, Pay regular visits to yourself.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
It's that simple. And meditation
isn't about getting some state...
Okay, I'm going to sit and breathe,
and open the chakras,
and raise the kundalini
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
and have this light, you know.
Open this, and have this fabulous vision,
and then open like the sky--and hold it.
Oh yeah, I got it, fantastic!
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
But after a while, you know, you get stuck even there,
you have to breathe.
Okay, it opens and it closes.
And my teacher Ajahn Chah said, If you haven't wept deeply,
you probably haven't really learned to meditate yet.
It doesn't mean that everyone has to weep all the time,
but we carry the tears of the world with us, we do...
And we carry the love of the world with us.
And the tears need to be wept and the love needs to be felt.
Not for anybody else, not because you need to do it,
it's not quite the right word,
but because the soul needs to do it,
the heart, the spirit, in order to fulfill
the gift that you've been given for your life--
and to bring something beautiful into this world.
So you sit in meditation, and instead of stopping
the feelings and thoughts and so forth,
you bow to each one, oh, yes, this too...
And you step out of the body of fear,
the small sense of self, and become the ground,
the temple, the sanctuary yourself,
the guest house, and say, oh yes, you too, and you too...
And here I am, like the Buddha
under the tree of enlightenment, saying, yes, this too.
And here I am, still heart, open with compassion
in the midst of it all.
Ajahn Chah called it being the one who knows
or finding your true home...
touching something that's bigger than the
things we get caught up in, our day-to-day experience.
Now, it's also true that in finding sanctuary,
and refuge, and returning home
that while we need to do it in our own unique way,
we need one another.
It's a kind of funny thing.
Again, you know, like remembering your Buddha nature
and your zip code, there's a certain way
in which you need to face your aloneness and despair
all by yourself--nobody else can do it for you.
And at the same time, we need each other desperately,
and we can't completely do it alone.
Isn't that also true?
What story to read?
Oh, this one, just cause it's fun,
even though I read it recently...
From Fran Peavey, activist and friend:
One day I was walking through the Stanford University
campus with a friend and saw a crowd of people
with cameras and video equipment on a little hillside.
They were clustered around a pair of chimpanzees,
the male running loose and the female on a chain
about 25 feet long.
It turned out the male was from Marine World Africa
and the female was being studied for something or other
at Stanford, and who I thought were the spectators
were actually scientists and publicity people
trying to get them to mate.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
The male was eager, you know how that goes.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
He grunted and grabbed the female's chain and tugged.
She whimpered and backed away.
He pulled again, she pulled back.
Watching the chimps' faces, I began to feel
sympathy for the female.
Suddenly the female chimp yanked her chain
out of the male's grasp, and to my amazement
she walked through the crowd straight over to me
and took my hand.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
Then she led me across the circle
to the only other two women in the crowd
and she joined hands with us...
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
and the three of us stood together in a circle.
I remember the feeling of that rough palm against mine.
The little chimp had recognized us,
and reached out across all the years of evolution
to form her own women's support group.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
So there is the finding of sanctuary,
and at the same time there's also
the sanctuary that we offer to one another.
My friend Annie Lamott puts it this way,
she says, My mind is like a bad neighborhood.
I try not to go there alone.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
So when I was in Hawaii on the island of Hawaii,
on the big island, when I go there on the Kona side
I like to go and visit this place
called Pu'uhonua o Honaunau,
which is the Hawaiian name for the Temple
or City of Refuge.
And you go down this long road down to the beach,
and it's a black lava beach, the sand is black,
and this 10-foot-wide lava wall around it,
and the pools for the ali'i, for the noblemen,
for the king and queens, and the little temples.
And what's said of Pu'uhonua
is it's the Temple of Refuge and Forgiveness,
that no matter what you did in the ancient Hawaiian culture,
if you killed someone or you broke the worst taboo,
if you could find your way into that temple,
you would be forgiven.
Of course, getting in, the question is,
does it still work, you know?
Can I also avail myself of this place?
And it has a great power to it.
Part of what a sanctuary offers...
In the Buddhist temple, there's this sacred boundary
called a sema that's made
where the monks or the nuns will sit
in every square, every, you know, four-foot square
of the earth, one after another and another,
doing prayers of forgiveness before anyone's invited in.
It's a kind of sacred boundary or sacred ground.
And people make their rituals of prayers and confessions
and forgiveness and practices,
to step out of shame, to step out of errors
and mistakes, and the dungeons
that you've found yourself in,
and realize that it's never, ever too late to start again,
to remember your first agreement,
to remember who you really are, or what you're here to do,
to listen to the heart and begin again.
In New York, there was a man who was
kind of a performance artist,
he called himself Mr. Apology.
And he set up in the old days
an 800 number that you could call
if you wanted to apologize for anything.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHTER]
This is how our culture is, it's a weird culture,
you have to admit.
And he started getting, not just hundreds,
but thousands of calls with people apologizing for stuff.
You know, apologize and you will be forgiven.
And there were people who had done all kinds of crimes,
and he said some of the floods of calls,
some of the stories were terribly poignant, you know...
But even in this kind of bizarre mechanical way,
as an art project, it had meaning.
Because we need to find a way to release the past,
all the things that we've judged ourselves for,
to learn from it, and to make something new again
from our heart.
And a true sanctuary is a place
of mercy and forgiveness.