Mushim Ikeda: Great Rivers Flow Silently

Good morning and good day. Bipak Sangha. I'm just delighted to be with you and I see some familiar faces. So it's just wonderful to be together with you. Let's begin as usual with maybe around 25 to 30 minutes of guided meditation practice. Now due to the wonders of zoom, you can actually do whatever practice you like. That works best for you. If it's a movement practice, you might wanna turn off your camera and you're all on mute. So you could do chanting practice, bowing practice. There are many, many forms of Buddhist based meditation practices as well as probably hundreds and thousands of forms of meditation in the various global faith and indigenous spiritual traditions and religions. And we have a choice. The guidance I'll provide will be in mindfulness meditation as we know mindfulness is a word in English. I think it might even originate from the Christian, one of the Christian traditions, meaning mindfulness of God, keeping God in mind. However, this form of mindfulness is from the Buddhist tradition going back several thousand years and is also in a Buddhist context called vipassana, which means seeing clearly, to see clearly, to perceive clearly, reality clearly, vipassana meditation, and it's also called insight meditation, different words, same method. And I'll begin by inviting the bell of mindfulness gently three times. I can't see myself. Oh, here we go. If you like, take a deep breath, relax. The word mindfulness in mindfulness meditation, this particular method of meditation practice, as I understand it, usually comes from the ancient Buddhist word sati, in the ancient language of Pali, P-A-L-I. And also the same word in Sanskrit, another ancient language of Buddhism is smirti, usually romanized as S-M-R-T-I. This does not mean sitting silently on our butts. Breathing in and out. What it actually means is to remind ourselves. Mindfulness is a reminder. A reminder of what? So it's up to each of you to decide, because only you know to remind yourself of what is most important in your life right now. In Buddhism, we always remind ourselves, our time in this lifetime is not infinite. What is the great work you wish to accomplish? And then relaxing and letting that go, so it can just flow underground and be there as part of our water table. If it works for you, you might like to take several deep, slow, cleansing breaths, relaxing breaths. If it doesn't work for you, no problem, just breathe as you would normally, and it can help us become aware of sensations, physical sensations, body sensations, as we breathe in and as we breathe out, because although in this lifetime, many, many things change, if we are alive, we have to be breathing. And are we aware that we're breathing? And if so, how are we aware? We're aware because we feel things in our bodies. So we might begin by becoming aware of body sensations, physical sensations. There's no right or wrong here, by the way. As we breathe in and breathe out in a natural, relaxed fashion, where do we feel it in our bodies? What do we feel, perhaps with a little intention to try to release some stress or tension as we exhale and breathe out? That's a kindness to ourself. So we begin by the invitation to practice mindful awareness of breath, and then perhaps feeling, extending the breath sensations throughout the body. The entire body is breathing. And what sensations do we feel in our feet, in our back, in the top of our heads? Let's give it a try. Once again, if this works for you, breathing in, becoming aware of any stress or tension, that you may be holding in body, like a stiffness in the shoulders, back of the neck, something like that, or any stress or tension that you may be holding in your mind. By this we mean worrying, thinking about things that don't really serve us, and then just trying to let them go. Breathing in, becoming aware of stress in body or mind, breathing out, ha, let it go. In mindfulness or vipassana or in-sight meditation, all the same method, we become aware of physical sensations. We become aware that usually thinking is occurring, and we might become aware of one or more emotions. And this can help to create some space, a feeling of more space in our lives, space for what? One possibility with which we'll end this period of community meditation as a black indigenous people of color and multi-heritage meditation-based community. One possibility is to create space for the practice of metta, M-E-T-T-A, translated into English as loving kindness or universal goodwill. Good morning and good day. Spirit Rock Meditation Center, black indigenous people of color and multi-heritage sangha friends. Sangha as we know means spiritual community, and so in spiritual community, we're friends in a very special way, which is called spiritual friendship, also calliana meetta, calliana meetta. We're spiritual friends. What are spiritual friends? Because it's good to have friend friends, any kind of friends, good friends. In the Buddhist texts, one of the definitions of spiritual friendship is associating with people who are wise and good, wise and good. And people who help us to move forward in our own spiritual development, that's what a spiritual friend is. They help us to move forward towards profound liberation and help to make us happier. So I hope you have many good calliana meetta, and we can become calliana meetta to one another. We opened with one of my new favorite songs, which is called Heavy Foot, it's really topping the charts I think, by the musician who seems to be a young man named Monrovia. In case you're not yet familiar with this talented person, National Public Radio NPR offers this biographical information. Born in Liberia during the country's civil war, Monrovia was adopted by an American missionary family and spent his childhood moving around before eventually settling in, get this, Tennessee. His debut album, Bloodline, untangles that complicated lineage through ukulele and guitar-driven folk melodies. In music he describes as quote unquote, Afro-Appalachian. And I'm just really enjoying following his music in part because I grew up in Ohio. And near Akron, Ohio, which then was in the 60s and 70s was known as the tire capital, not of the United States of the world. Firestone, cyberling, Goodyear, all of the tire manufacturers were centered at that time in Akron, Ohio. So we had the most fabulous sunsets because of the extreme air pollution caused by the tire factories. And you can often smell burning rubber, especially in the evenings for some reason, I don't know, the wind would blow that way. I was in a rural area outside of Akron. And many of my classmates, their parents had come up from the Appalachian states, particularly West Virginia, to work in the tire factories. So those were most of my classmates in the public schools that I went to in what was then called Greensburg, Ohio. But I had never met an Afro Appalachian. The title of this talk is Great Rivers Flow Silently. At least as I'm experiencing it, times are really tough right now. So I'll try to contribute something positive by offering two brief quotes as food for, and making air quotes, thought, food for thought, in this case, meaning reflection, mindfulness, and curiosity. So I know you're noting this. Thought or thoughts in our meditation practice can mean what's often called discursive thinking. Sometimes I call it for myself junk thoughts, just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, gotta do this, gotta do that, what about this? Hey, how about that? However, mindful thinking might mean contemplative reflection, mindful awareness, and open curiosity. What more can I learn here? So quote number one, first, the immortal martial artist whom Oakland, California, where I live, has fairly recently paid tribute to with a street in his name. I think we now have Bruce Lee Wei. So Bruce Lee said this, my friend, there we could have friend again, my friend, be like water. And a second quote, going back just a few years, the Encyclopedia of Britannia says, the sutta nipata, so sutta means discourse of the Buddha, usually, teaching of the Buddha. The sutta nipata was composed orally, so these teachings were passed on only through recitation, memorization and recitation. They were not written down for many hundreds of years. The sutta nipata was composed orally around the sixth to fifth century BCE, reflecting the lifetime of the so-called historical Buddha Gotama, and was first written down in Sri Lanka during the first century BCE, before the common era. So once again, this is another quote that goes back a few years, just a few. So I'm not, I don't have a degree in Buddhist studies, but I'll try to approximate the original verse in Pali and then a translation into English. Tam nadihi vijanata, sobe su, padarresku, padarresu sa, sananta yanti kusoba, tuniati mahodadi. The translation into English is this. Learn this from the waters. In mountain clefs and chasms, loud gush the streamlets, but great rivers flow silently. Learn this from the waters. So it's saying, water can be our teacher. Learn this from the waters. In mountain clefs and chasms, loud gush the streamlets, but great rivers flow silently. And as was mentioned in the introduction, that our wonderful teacher, that our wonderful Zoom event manager mentioned earlier in my bio, I do have a background in monastic, Renunciate Buddhist practice, and in 1988 was in South Korea for eight months on a very sacred mountain called Tokseungsan, Tokseung Mountain. And the entire mountain was a network of temples, monasteries with monks and monasteries or nunneries with nuns. I was at one of the big nuns training temples. There were some hermitages. There were lots of lay people in residence as well as tourists who came and went. So the entire mountain was a very ancient sacred mountain called Sudoksa, the Sudoksa complex. And there were streams coming down that mountain, flowing toward the China Sea on the west coast of South Korea. So great rivers flow silently. Once again, what are the great rivers in your life? This is a meditation question. I come originally from the Korean Zen Buddhist tradition, which is now being called a practice of inquiry. So instead of telling us, believe this, believe that, believe this, well, maybe or maybe not, I'm kind of rebellious by nature to tell you the truth. So it might be better to, helpful to think in terms of good questions. So here's a question for you. What are the great rivers in your life at this very moment? What are the great rivers? You can define this in any way because it's your question. What are the great rivers that flow silently in your life at this very moment? And I do hope that you'll be willing to perhaps share what has come to you in this brief reflection during our community harvest or Q and A section because we're all teachers to one another here. We come together as a learning community. What are the great rivers in your life at this very moment that sustain you, that remind you of how great life and death is and how it continues to flow into the great ocean of compassion? So I know I said two quotes, however, because we're now in the flow, I can't help but braid into our Sunday morning gathering this most famous quotation from August 28th, 1963. The famous, I have a dream, speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., coming from a Christian perspective. No, no. We are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream. We will not be satisfied with the current social conditions until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness. Like a mighty stream. And of course, to stitch yet one more contrasting square into this morning's Dharma quilt offering, we're probably all too aware of another kind of great river and mighty stream. The immense power of nature released through the defiant ignorance of human nature. So there's nature nature of planet Earth and then what I'm calling the defiant ignorance of human nature. And this is the very recent devastation in Nepal at the Nepal-Tibet, one section of the Nepal-Tibet, or as some news medias are calling it, the Nepal-China border, because the Chinese government does not recognize a country called Tibet. So the very recent devastation at that border where a climate crisis caused, a climate caused collapsing glacier unexpectedly swept away an entire city in thousands of residents and international tourists. That was not a great river flowing silently, nurturing thousands of species of life. It was a river of destruction. Thus, once again, using our practice of mindful awareness and trying to extend immense kindness, patience, universal love, compassion, to ourselves and others, yet also using our willingness to kick some, but Bruce Lee style when required, what are the great rivers in your life at this very moment? And we're opening to all of the associations, poetically all of the definitions of the great rivers of our life. What are the great rivers in your life at this very moment that are bringing you nurturance? You know, if we live near a really big river, traditionally, well, we'd be fishing there, getting a lot of food out of the river. We'd be getting our water there and the river would be attracting ducks and herons and just all kinds of life, really. Maybe some water plants that we'd be eating, rivers, the source, part of the source of life, fresh water. And also great rivers, can't we can associate with the great social movements, justice movements of our times and looking back into the past through the lens of history and your family histories as well, which perhaps have not been recorded. What are your connections to the great liberatory movements that help to sustain us in this very moment? I turned 72 this year of the Baby Boomer generation, the so-called Baby Boomer generation. And so as I came of age, graduating from high school in Ohio and going to undergrad college in Oberlin College in Ohio, which was kind of known for being a sort of quite radical and politically active undergraduate population, not all. There were also many musicians, some of whom were politically active, some of whom were not. And other liberal arts college students, some of whom were political and some of whom were not. However, as a whole, the atmosphere was pretty much March in the streets, anti-war in Vietnam demonstrations, the Black Power movement, the Women's Liberation movement, the beginnings of the Asian-American Liberation movement and gay pride as well. There was a lot going on when I was in my late teens and early 20s. And there was a lot of energy of hope for positive change, as well as acknowledgement and grief at the cost of those changes. So we may be of different generations and from different backgrounds. What have been the great Libertary and Justice movements to which you, your family of blood or of choice and of choice, your families of blood and of choice, what are the great Libertary movements to which you have connected, which have benefited you and those you love? And that points, I feel, to the responsibility each of us may choose to take on, to continue to contribute to those mighty rivers today and in the days ahead. So bringing it home to the present or the near present, yesterday I was working on this Dharma talk and an activist friend called me and said, hey, there is a night market happening in Oakland Chinatown tonight. Wanna go? And I thought, yeah, I'd like to have some fun. I'd like to feel like a little partying this weekend would be great. So I said, yes. And I tried to convince my adult son who lives with me to go. But he said, he said, no, I don't think so. And that turned out to be the right decision because it was extremely overstimulating and extremely lively. So I don't think he would have enjoyed it at all. However, I did. I went with two social justice activist friends and we were joined by another social justice activist friend or all BIPOC. And we drove down to Oakland Chinatown in the night market last night and began the streets were blocked off for a kind of a U-shaped loop in over a couple of blocks. And so of course we began walking around. There were numerous music stages and DJs who were operating out of cars, they had outfitted vans and cars with amplifiers and they had generators running and they were blasting their and spinning discs and so forth out of lit cars, which was really fun. And we joined this great river of humanity it being Oakland and Oakland Chinatown night market. Pretty much predominantly I would say BIPOC people's extremely diverse kids, babies. There were some dogs there walking around the food booths, the handicraft booths. The, there was one booth where you could write down on little slips and request them to play your favorite song. So, or something that just had a lot of resonance for you. So because of my generation, I wrote out my slip was YMCA by the village people, very danceable. And actually, since I'm Japanese American, also the subsequent in more recent years, there was this kind of a spoof song made up that grew very popular to the same tune as YMCA called Spam Musubi. You can look it up on YouTube. It's really hilarious. Musubi means rice ball. So Spam rice ball, Spam Musubi, which is a hugely popular in Hawaii as a treat where my mom grew up. And I have a niece that's still her favorite treat. You can get it like from the 7-Eleven. So I said, these are the songs I request. And they were just fun things like that going on. These night markets are in part a kind of take back the night. Initiative within the community because of fear of crime, of actual crime and subsequent heavy street presence of the Oakland Police Department, which is heartily supported by some and heartily pressed back against by others. But for many years, I think during the pandemic and so forth, the streets of Oakland Chinatown would be deserted as soon as the business day ended. And so the lack of nightlife, of restaurant life that could would be in the dark hours up until nine or 10 or whatever, everything was very repressed and shut down. And we needed that this economic stimulus as well as ways for people to feel safe and happy in the streets of Oakland Chinatown. It was thus last night, the atmosphere was festive. It was happy. There are just crowds of people flowing slowly and peacefully through the various streets. The vendors were doing well. There was crowding and flowing and eating and dancing, again, numerous music stages. And we stayed, we had dinner in a restaurant. Although there was lots of street food, but it was so loud on the streets. We went into a restaurant, a Chinese restaurant and had a great meal. And then by the time that we came out and resumed walking around, they were beginning to shut down. And as they were going into that last phase of the night market on what was called the main stage, it said main stage, musical stage, there was a very BIPOC, hip hop group shouting out, doing hip hop, shouting out. So, you know, the F word that rhymes with duck. So they began shouting rhythmically, F U, F U, F U. And people are, you know, there were crowds in there. And I thought, what kind of hostile thing is this? Because they were actually saying it in this like really welcoming kind of happy positive way. So they're shouting F U, F U. And then they add on another word, which is F U, F U, insert name of prominent government official. And continued with that, with very enjoyable dancing and joyfulness in the streets of Oakland. How will you flow today? How will we flow together if we're in the United States toward the November, 2026 midterm elections as practitioners of the Buddha Dharma, the teachings of Buddhism? We might also consider how will we flow together for this lifetime and the next lifetime and the next lifetime as we are reborn again and again into this world, wh