I Wear the Robe of Liberation
Kynan Sutherland Sensei
Liberation Within Obstruction
Kynan Sutherland Sensei (2020)
What a year! Fires, coronavirus, the Black Lives Matter movement, hard lockdown, growing conspiracy theories, hate speech—the list goes on. Even the reality of wearing face-masks down the street, or having children at home, or working from home, or having all our plans thrown out the window by travel restrictions and unemployment, has upended the very idea of what we used to call ‘normal.’
Instead, we’ve found ourselves a little like the woman Adam Zagajewski overheard on a train as it stopped for half an hour in a field: “This isn’t possible!” she cried. But here we are, halted in that field, looking around and asking new questions like, “Where the hell am I? Who the hell am I? Where am I going? Who am I travelling with?”
Even if you’ve avoided the full hit of lockdown you’ve nevertheless had to reckon with it one way or another. And this reckoning is appropriate, I think. What we used to call “normal” is what gave rise to this crisis, so our reassessment of the way things should be is long overdue. Our consumption, individualism, blindness to the earth, relinquishment of anything like a commons, has all be laid bare and is now shockingly obvious to anyone with their eyes open.
So there’s a lot to be said for stopping in the field. It affords a little time for us to reflect and ponder, even feel our way forward. Perhaps we’re seeing the reality of how we live and the repercussions of our actions for the first time, as if a mirror has been held up to reveal a frightened, browbeaten face.
So how do we practice in the midst of so much change? I want to look at this question with the help of two sutras: The Verse of the Rakusu and Liberation Within Obstruction.
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A few years ago we introduced a new sutra into our sutra books called Liberation Within Obstruction. Here it is:
Liberation Within Obstruction
In the presence of Sangha,
in the light of Dharma,
in oneness with Buddha –
may my path to realization
benefit all beings!
In this passing moment karma ripens
and all things come to be.
I vow to affirm what is:
If there’s cost, I choose to pay.
If there’s need, I choose to give.
If there’s pain, I choose to feel.
If there’s sorrow, I choose to grieve.
When burning, I choose heat.
When calm, I choose peace.
When starving, I choose hunger.
When happy, I choose joy.
Whom I encounter, I choose to meet.
What I shoulder, I choose to bear.
When it’s my birth, I choose to live.
When it’s my death, I choose to die.
Where this takes me, I choose to go.
Being with what is, I respond to what is.
This life is as real as a dream;
the one who knows it cannot be found;
and truth is not a thing, therefore I vow
to choose this constant Dharma open gate!
May all Buddhas and all beings
help me live this vow.
From the outset we’re made aware that the sutra is a vow: a vow to choose what is, whatever it is, in affirmation of our actual life. This choosing is not the agitated, highly selective choice of a consumer culture. It’s not Holden versus Toyota, or Apple versus IBM. It’s the choiceless choice of intimacy itself, dropping right into the flow of each moment.
This isn’t just following the current, but becoming the current completely. The sutra flows like a river, wending through cost, need, pain, sorrow, peace, heat, hunger, joy. It doesn’t skirt birth or death, and certainly doesn’t avoid the wild rapids of our life. Instead, we’re shown the full range of the river, from source to mouth. And we’re invited to get wet!
So what does it mean to ‘choose’ these various states? Well, it means to jump right in—splash!— to whatever is happening. Good, bad, high, low—it doesn’t matter. We just jump in. And by so doing we discover the timeless sufficiency inside each moment. There is no beginning or end to this sufficiency, just as there is no beginning or end to birth and death. To inhabit even a single breath fully is to bathe in a river without edges. We’re wet through and through. And that’s where we discover our intimacy with all beings, an intimacy that the sutra describes as ripeness.
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At the very beginning of the sutra it says, “In this passing moment karma ripens / and all things come to be.”
I love the use of ripens here. It has a flesh and bone quality about it that is very important. You can almost smell the fragrance, feel the weight. It’s juicy, colourful, embodied. And it shows us how ready each moment is, how full and ripe for the picking.
Let’s play with this a little and re-write the sutra this way:
If there’s cost, I ripen in paying.
If there’s need, I ripen in giving.
If there’s pain, I ripen in feeling.
If there’s sorrow, I ripen in grief.
Here you can see that the natural, unhindered move of practice is to ripen in response. Cost ripens in paying; need ripens in giving; pain ripens in feeling; sorrow ripens in grief. Indeed, when all is ripeness, when everything is seen as swollen, delectable, just right, nothing can be rejected or dismissed as unripe, unsatisfactory, too hard, or too bitter. Choosing then is not a matter of preference, then: it’s a matter of ripening in response.
The matter of likes and dislikes, or picking and choosing, has been an ongoing concern in Zen practice. When Zhaozhou (8-9th Century China) was asked, “What is the true Dharmakaya of the Buddha?” he said, “Is there anything else you dislike?” He wasn’t just drawing attention to the monk’s soiling of the Dharmakaya here. He was also offering a great life koan to all of us: “Is there anything else you dislike?”
Indeed, is there anything “else” part from what is happening right now? And if “else” is dropped, leaving nothing but what is, what happens to “dislike”? Does it liquefy into something like love and ripen in response?
Anna Swir explores all this in a poem called “I carried Bedpans.”
I Carried Bedpans
I worked as an orderly at the hospital
without medicine and water.
I carried bedpans
filled with pus, blood and faeces.
I loved pus, blood and faeces—
they were alive like life,
and there was less and less
life around.
When the world was dying,
I was only two hands, handing
the wounded a bedpan.
When I first read this poem, I was struck by the image of the poet’s two hands serving the world. And it reminded me of Kuan-yin’s hands, which are always ready to serve those in need. These hands have no ego. There is nothing they dislike. They do not shrink from the desolate realities of this world. Rather, they appear in service to the world, “handing / the wounded a bedpan.”
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So far from avoiding her moment, Anna Swir ripens in service and even takes refuge in what most of us would find abhorrent.
In the ceremony of Jukai, we take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. This means taking refuge in our actual lives—in the actualisation of our lives: the teaching, impermanence, and the many beings we encounter on the path.
By now I hope it’s easier to see how different refuge is from “retreat” in the superficial sense. We can’t find refuge by recoiling from our lives. Instead, we can can only experience it in the surge of circumstances, just as we find them. Refuge is becoming these circumstances, embodying them, no matter how bumpy or wild they may seem at first.
As Hafiz says in his poem “Tired of Speaking Sweetly”:
Tired of Speaking Sweetly
Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.
If you had the courage and
Could give the beloved His choice, some nights, [or some years!]
He would drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.
Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth
That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others.
Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.
God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside a tiny room with Himself
And practice his dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favour:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a “playful drunken mood”
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.
Well, the art of Zen is not to pack our bags and hightail it out of town, but to grow curious about what’s happening, and discover exactly what we’re being shaken into.
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So what is shaking you right now?
I’ve mentioned the fires, Black Lives Matter, Coronavirus, the US election. But another thing that shook me this year was the destruction of the rock shelters at Juukan Gorge. When I heard the news I felt a searing cut of betrayal. Not because I knew those places—in fact I’d never heard of them before—but because greed, hatred and ignorance had once again triumphed over the humble claims of aboriginal people to their land.
The land that was destroyed was Minded Country. Loved Country. I can’t imagine how this betrayal was felt by the Puutu Kunti Kuurama and Pinikura peoples. But I did see a video of one of them saying, “What they done here wrong,” followed by another man, visibly shaking, who said: “I bring my boys an show them. My two sons. Show them their great grandfathers country, their grandfather’s country. And you feel happy bringin’um. Now all we got is a mess. Don’t let this happen. Never let this happen.”
But we do let it happen. And it keeps on happening.
Think of the Directions Tree, or Fiddleback Tree, that was destroyed last month in Djab Warring Country, near Buangor. As we all learned this tree formed part of a network of birthing trees directly linked to the songs and stories of nearby Mount Langi Ghiran, known as the black cockatoo dreaming site, and to the Hopkins River, which is connected to the eel dreaming.
The main birthing tree is believed to be 800 years old, and was a place where women gave birth. Placentas were mixed with seed and buried underneath the directions trees, tying them to a child’s life.
The protection of the birthing trees has inspired years of protests by Djab Wurrung people and other Aboriginal Victorians. But according to the law, this particular tree was “not on the official record.” At least fifty people were arrested trying to protect the Directions Tree from destruction, including at least two legal observers, who attended the site to ensure police complied with the law, as well as several Aboriginal land protectors.
The tree was cut down to make way for a highway. For me the most confronting image was of its trunk unceremoniously dumped into the back of a truck, as if headed to the tip.
What upset me was the flagrant and pedantic disregard for felt connection. As Sissy Austin said, “I can feel the chainsaws tearing through my heart, my spirit, my Djap Wurrung body is in pain. Today I laid on the floor and cried. Cried for our mother, Djap Wurrung country.”
The price of being alive to country is to be equally alive to the pain and grief caused when the body of Country is cut.
As Bill Neidje says:
I feel it with my body,
With my blood.
Feeling all these trees,
All this country.
You feel it.
You can look.
But feeling…
That make you.
Feeling make you.
Out there in open space,
He coming through your body.
Look while he blow and feel with your body,
Because tree just about your brother or father
And tree is watching you.
Indeed. Tree is watching you. Even—and perhaps especially—when Tree is gone.
So ask yourself—Where did Tree go? Perhaps you can sense that Tree is still right here, watching you with watery eyes—your own eyes. Or with a torn heart—your own heart. Only when we let the awfulness of such destruction penetrates us completely can sacred places continue their work of transformation and connection.
In this case, the Directions Tree is still pointing the Way. Pointing us back to Country, back to connection, back to shared ground, back to a truly shared body.
We can’t wake up outside this body. We can’t wake up outside this earth. Or outside the sufferings of this world and our complicity with this suffering. Instead, to be enveloped by Country and feel it completely is to wear the robe of Liberation — the Robe of Liberation within Obstruction perhaps — which we honour whenever we recite the Verse of the Rakusu:
I wear the robe of liberation,
The formless field of benefaction,
The teachings of the Tathagatha,
Saving the many beings.
The formless field of benefaction leaves nothing out. It includes mountains, rivers, the great wide earth, the sun, the moon and the stars. Or we might say hills, dry creeks, grassy plains, scorching sun, frozen moons, dark patches in the milky way.
The word benefaction is instructive. It means “gift”, or even better, “donation”. This points to the self-donation of practice, where we give our small, cooped-up self away to the formless field of benefaction, discovering our intrinsic place within it.
To offer ourselves to each moment is to find the place where we are. It’s to belong—and know we belong—and honour and cultivate this belonging.
I was recently struck by a definition of Country as land already related to people.
This land is already related to you. Depending on you—just as you depend on it. There is not a hairsbreadth of difference between you and Country.
And listen to how this relates to an exchange with Zen Master Daopi:
A monk asked Daopi, “The ancients said, ‘I do not love what worldly people love.’ I wonder, what does your Reverence love?”
Tongan Daopi replied, “I have already become like this.”
Like this. Whatever this is. That is love in the fullest sense. It is love for the flow, for ceaseless change. To love is to feel the myriad joys, cries and pangs of the world as your own. This is the “constant dharma open gate”, saving the many beings, time and time again.
Thich Nhat Hanh was once asked what we most need to do to save our world. “What we most need to do,” he replied, “is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying.” This is the radical energy behind Yunmen’s, “Every day is a good day.”
The good here has nothing to do with preferences, and everything to do with choosing our circumstances completely. To choose completely steps right through picking and choosing, which is selective and fearful.
In Zen we choose the good of laughter, tears, sorrows, hungers, loss and peace.
The good can never be found by shutting these things out. It ripens in whatever is happening, right where we are.
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So the gift of this year has been to draw us more deeply into what really matters.
Instead of running around “doing” things in the usual busy, frenetic way, we’ve found ourselves slowed, forced to meet our moment more intimately, more openly.
And if we’re lucky, this has caused a re-evaluation of priorities, and a lateral move of the heart away from our “selves” and towards each other.
The energy of the Robe of Liberation is: we wear each other. Which is why the sutra ends with these extraordinarily moving words:
May all Buddhas and all beings
help me live this vow.
This article was first offered as a talk to the Melbourne Zen Group in November 2020