Dharma Topic: I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes

Dear Still Water Friends,

This Thursday evening after our meditation period we will practice the Three Touchings of the Earth, a guided movement meditation that helps us understand what it means to be human and alive. The First Touching helps us place ourselves in the historical stream of life. The Second Touching reminds us of our inextricable connections with everyone and everything existing with us at this moment. The Third Touching reminds us of the potential for understanding, love, joy, and compassionate action that arises when we are truly in touch with life.

In my sitting practice for the past several weeks I have been noticing the changes that occur when I reframe my understanding of who is sitting and breathing. When I imagine that it is me, Mitchell, sitting, I have have an image of a little red ball a foot behind my heart that is shooting out energy. My shoulders are up and pulled toward my chest, I am a little bit tense and slightly leaning forward, perhaps into the future.

In contrast, when I say to myself, "No, it is not me, Mitchell, sitting. It is the universe sitting. I am just the vehicle. My parents, my partner, my children, Thay, the Still Water community, my many teachers, everyone in Iraq, they are all part of who is breathing and sitting," I have this image of a huge funnel coming into my back. The sides of the funnel extend backwards, gradually becoming less distinct. My shoulders come down, my chest expands up and out, and I settle more into the sitting and the present moment.

After a while of experimenting with this in my sitting, I realized the same possibilities existing in how I saw myself throughout the day. When I was walking, when I was cooking, when I was drinking tea, I could be the red ball or the funnel. Like with sitting, my experience of the moment changed depending on who I imagined myself to be.

Another shift occurred this past week when I realized that the quality of my interactions with others also changed depending on how I viewed them. If I saw the person in front of me as a tightly bound, self-contained, ball of energy, I became tighter and more reactive. When I saw lifetimes of experience funneling into the person, I relaxed and my heart opened.

You are invited to sit with us this Thursday, to practice the Three Touchings of the Earth with us, and to share in our discussion. Do you have an image of small self and large self that has been helpful to you?

The title for this evening, "I am large, I contain multitudes," comes from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. A copy of the Three Touchings of the Earth we use is available at www.StillWaterMPC.org under "Articles and Resources" and then "Still Water Ceremonies." (You might want also to take a look at the Calendar of Events while you are at the website.) An excerpt by Thay on the Three Touchings and our no-self nature is below.

Warm Wishes,

Mitchell

Excerpt from The Art of Healing Ourselves, A Dharma talk given by Thich Nhat Hanh on July 30, 1996, in Plum Village, France.

One of the deepest insights that you may try to obtain is the insight on no-self. But no-self is not a theory, a doctrine, a philosophy. No-self is only the insight that has to be touched directly with your practice. As practitioners we should not talk about no-self in such a way that it will have nothing to do with our daily life. I have recommended that all friends who come here to Plum Village during this summer learn and practice the practice of Earth-touching. Touching the Earth is one of the many practices we do in Plum Village in order to touch the nature of our non-self. It is very healing. It heals body and mind. We should practice it every day.

You hold your hands like this [palms together in front of chest] and stand in front of something like a tree, or the blue sky, or a dandelion, or the statue of the Buddha, anything—because everything has the Buddha inside, has the ultimate dimension inside—to bow to anything is fine, to the moon, to the morning star. You produce your true presence, and be there with one hundred percent of yourself. Then you bow down and you touch the earth. Touch the earth with your feet, with your arms, with your forehead. Touch deeply, don't do it halfway. Because this is an act of surrender. Surrender what and surrender to what? This is the act of surrendering the self, the idea of self. Because you think that you are a separate entity, that is the basic cause for your suffering. When you touch the earth deeply—the earth may be your mother, your father, your ground of being, yourself—you surrender the idea that you are a separate thing. You smile and you open your palms. The act of opening your palm like this and facing inward, it means that I'm nothing. There is nothing. My intelligence—we're very proud of our intelligence. Our talents. Our diplomas. Our position in society. We may be proud of many things we have or we are, but when we are in that position we smile and we know, we know that all these things have been handed down by our ancestors.

If you have a beautiful voice, don't think that you have created that beautiful voice for yourself. It has been transmitted by your ancestors, your parents. If you have the talent of a painter, don't think that you have invented that talent. It has been transmitted to you as a seed. So everything you have thought that you are has come from the cosmos, from your ancestors. So during the first touching of the earth you link yourself with the cosmos. The water in you, the heat in you, the air in you, the soil in you, belong to the water outside, the soil outside. Without the forest how could you be? Without your father and mother how could you be there this moment? Therefore you say, in wisdom, that you are nothing. Everything that you think, you thought that you are, you have received from the cosmos, from parents—including your body. Suddenly non-self arises as an insight. You belong to the stream of life. If you bear hatred toward your father, you think that your life has been ruined by your father, that you don't want to have anything to do with your father. It is out of ignorance that you have thought so. Because if you touch the reality of no-self, you see very clearly that you are your father. You are just a continuation of your father, and your father is a continuation of your grandfather.

We are one in a stream of life. To think that you are a separate entity, that you are a self that can be independent from your father, is a very funny thing. Because your father is inside you, you can never get rid of him. There is no alternative except to reconcile with your father. To reconcile with him means to reconcile with yourself. You have a chance to do so now with the practice. The other person, it might not be your father, he may be your brother or your spouse or anyone. You think that he or she has made you suffer so much, has made your life miserable. There is a tendency in you never to see him again, to hear from him again or from her again. That kind of willingness, that kind of feeling is born from your ignorance of the reality of no-self. Because we are all together. Not only are we together, we are inside each other, we inter-are. So during the first act of Touching the Earth you surrender your idea of self, and suddenly you release a lot of suffering, a lot of anger. You give yourself a chance for compassion and understanding to be born in your heart.

When you make a prostration like that you are not invoking a god to come and save you. To save yourself. But it is really a practice of wisdom. You touch the earth in order to release, to let go of your notion of self and to get insight that you belong to the same stream of life, reality. Suddenly you see that it is possible for you to make peace with that person. Making peace with him means making peace with you. Strange, because my peace depends very much on his peace or her peace. If I devote time, energy, to help him, to help her to suffer less, suddenly I have more peace and more happiness. I do not have the intention to do it for me. But I get all the results.