Practice is No Longer for the Self
An Interview with Gilbert Gutierrez, Part 3

The interview is translated into Chinese and published in Issue 488 of Humanity Magazine (April 2024), in commemoration of the 15^th anniversary of Master Sheng Yen's passing.


 


Q7: How do you feel about the rise of various schools of spirituality?

There was a book called The Secret. It was one where it said that anything that you want, you just have to put your mind on it, and then you can get it. Then the leaders of the group, they literally cooked people in a tent in a hot steam thing that they were having some ceremony, and the people were steamed alive. As a result of that, those people kind of disappeared. That movement disappeared. What they did not understand was everything is created by the mind. Everything is possible, but it has to be in harmony with karma. If you want to fly and you do not have that kind of an ability to learn how to do that, you are not going to fly. No matter how much you put it in your mind, you want to fly. Because you are subject to the laws of karma. 

What I call the new agey type thing, where they blend many different kinds of things together to make it palatable. I call them the Barney religions. Barney was the purple dinosaur from the kids, "I love you, you love me." That's about as deep as it went.

I always talk about the American culture that we want instant food so we have microwaves, so we don't have to wait for the food to cook. We can just get it in one minute, and it's hot. But then it is not as wholesome. And people use things, to me, it's better than them not doing it, and you hope from there that they can look further. I do not see that as a major obstruction. I see that as something as a product of this kind of instant noodle type of society. But then again, this is only samsaric temporary relief. 

Sometimes I would say that students want to come again for another pill or an injection. They would leave for two years, and they come back, and I go, you're coming back for another shot. They do not want to buy in completely. They just want to feel better. So I think that is where we should draw upon and show that the reason that Buddhism has been around for 2,500 years is that it works. It really is something that works. But we cannot attract people to Buddhism with old notions and old ideas. We have to make it relevant and contemporary to the problems that people have now. 

If you can show the people how they can reduce their suffering, using the basic steps is fine. But then later on, you have to show them that the world is a dream. Some people, when they hear that, they are interested immediately. Others will be afraid of that. But you have to use your wisdom to know how to present the truth to people. I think that even if there is a part of that which is there, then you would say, why do you want to have the instant frozen cake when you can have a very wonderful delicious meal, the full cake, and present it in this way to it. But it is easy for people to do that.

I do not want people to feel good. Seriously, I want them to feel uncomfortable. I want them to have a doubt in this world, in this dream, and to understand it. But by doing that, then using wisdom, the world becomes simpler, easier, an understandable place. Because one is attuned to the causes and conditions that bring forth all the appearances in the world. And we understand that. But if we love this world too much, then because of that, it is from our self-love, self-conceit, self-centrism that we stick ourselves to the world. But I want to unstick them from the world. I want to awaken them. 

When I was on the plane coming here to meditate, I started seeing, how can I present this? As you are meditating and you are aware, at a certain level, the self is almost gone but there is still this thin layer of self that is there that wants to superimpose itself and say, I am meditating. I am mind. And in that moment, then, that layer has to be peeled off. And as it is being peeled off, then the mind becomes very quiet, settled, and clear, and rested. This I wish to share with people.

Because when you do that and you get up off the cushion, this mind is yours to lose. As soon as you get off the cushion, do you immediately run to your phone to play TikTok or to do that, or do you do something of benefit? No. You have it. Every time you start to meditate, it is yours to lose. When we use Buddha mind perception we start with the understanding that just this mind is Buddha. Shifu would say the Buddha is in the present moment. Moment to moment to moment we have a choice. We can choose ignorance or the Buddha. So our practice is not to lose the Buddha. But we lose it very quickly because we mistake this illusory self for the real self, this consciousness for mind, rather than the mind to see the consciousness. This is the right view. It's very precious.


Q8: In the Western context, how do you keep our lineage pure?

A: I think that the first part is to have a firm foundation of a Buddhist doctrine and history from the very beginning. So we should not see, oh, this is Theravadan or this is Mahayana, and ignore all the Nikayas and all of those things. We want to have understanding of that, but then we also have to see the transition in Mahayana and the richness of Mahayana and the Chan school.

When we talk about the preservation of the Chan school, we have to understand its roots. And its roots in Mahayana come from the Abhidharma, the Yogacara, and the Madhyamaka schools. All of those schools poured into Chan, and some of them poured to the Huayen school and Tien-Tai school. Then the practice and the deep root went to Chan. In the Chan, what we did was we transformed all of those doctrines. Rather than try to pick apart the differences in the doctrines, we used the best of those doctrines to transform and to see through this world. That is so important when we see that. It should be clear just simply reading the Diamond Sutra. 

The Heart Sutra is a very enigmatic document because it has so many hidden parts to it that are there. But little by little as one sees it, we see there's a reason why it's called the Heart Sutra. Because it is the very heartwood of Buddha Dharma. And everything there, as you read, is consistent and is further expounded on by the Tathagatagarbha Sutras, which present Buddha nature. So there is an exploration of this Buddha nature. This we preserve. We have to keep this. We do not change the foundation of Buddha Dharma.

What we do is we change our delivery. We change the way in how we present Buddha Dharma to people so that they can understand. I often say: if you use an analogy, let us say, of an ox cart, most people have never seen an ox cart. So that kind of analogy from 2,000 years ago isn't good. But if you tell them that the computer has a virus, they understand that. When you say that the virus is yourself, then they begin to understand what you are talking about. So you use contemporary metaphors and examples to present to people. That makes sense to people. And we find the ways to do that. 
The point is that what are we advancing? We are presenting the wrong goods. The Dharma cannot be taught. It is the wrong orientation. We understand we still have to "teach the Dharma", or "present the Dharma". But if it was something that could be learned, then all of the scholars, the Buddhist scholars, would be enlightened. So we have to start from this premise, that what are we presenting? We present it in a way that we understand that it is beyond words and phrases. Nevertheless, you still study. It's necessary. 

All of the ancient masters struggled with this in terms of understanding it. In the past, it was misinterpreted, and all of a sudden, some of the people would throw out the teachings because at that point, they were attaching to it too much. It is not necessarily wrong or erroneous to study, but we study so that we understand. We study until we realize there is nothing to teach. It is in that way. Then we study harder with it. So it is a little bit different orientation. 

It is the right view. Right view is not a state of mind. It is the Buddha mind. The state of mind appears in mind. But mind is not a state. There would be no borders there. It is infinite. So we present things in this way. Someone listening to what we are talking about right now would probably know more about Buddha Dharma in this discussion than if they took 20 ABC classes. They may not understand everything, and that is okay. It is alright not to understand. It is what drives our investigation that is important to create a doubt that this world is real. And that is important.


Q9: On the 15^th anniversary of Master Sheng Yen's passing, how do you see the development of Dharma Drum Mountain Sangha?

This is our challenge in Dharma Drum is to bring forth that kind of a spirit of Chan that Shifu brought forth. And to maintain it in this way and keep the scholastic level high is important for us to have a very high scholastic level, especially of the monastics. They should know and study, follow the Buddha and study all the time and encourage people to study. So we are not simply a devotional organization where we simply doing chanting, recitation of the Buddha's name, different ceremonies, like water repentance ceremonies, etc.. Nothing wrong with that. I am very devotional and I have an altar in my home and I burn incense every day and give respect. But we should not stop there. That is what's important. And this is the difficult part.

The difficulty is having people accept that it is okay to teach Right View and the deeper aspects of the Dharma. It's okay for people to hear it. Maybe 90% of the people will not get completely everything that I say but they will still advance their practice. There will be a 10% that will make a great advancement. That 10% would not be getting it immediately if it were not presented. There is nothing wrong with Shifu's videotapes, nothing wrong at all, but I think those should be viewed before they go to the retreat. And then have a well-known advisor present the Dharma to the people to make it relevant. I think that is very, very important to do. Those kinds of things are important. We cannot have this foolish consistency of just simply doing the same thing. That was not the way it was when Shifu was alive. He presented his heart out at every retreat. And I would like to see that restored, and to find those well-known advisors to come to present the Dharma.

The preservation of Dharma Drum requires us to develop new leadership and new spiritual leaders. It was in Shifu's will, where he said that the President Abbot is not only the administrative leader but the spiritual leader of the organization and we have to have that kind of a respect for that President Abbot. It is that respect that the Pope is given in the Roman Catholic Church. That is there and it's important for us to have that to develop and cultivate the next generations who will be the next ones coming up that will take that place and who will be the ones that are going to confer Inka or become Dharma heirs, all of these things are challenges to Dharma Drum that Dharma Drum really needs to sit down and discuss this. I think it is something that is important in Dharma Drum for the preservation of Dharma Drum and keeping it relevant. Oftentimes groups subside because their one spiritual leader is gone and becomes a far distant memory. So that is why it is necessary for us to present or cultivate new leadership, new spiritual leaders and really work on those and those people should be cultivated by those who preceded them and to help them to progress their practice; if not, what are we doing? We are failing. We are not bringing forth people that have had realizations that are profound enough to have other people listen to them.

Because I know the people are studying the monastic history and the doctrine, so what I hope to do is to open them to the other side. One of my favorite analogies was Han Shan. He said that if someone takes a sword and pierces the sky, and when you pierce the sky, what is on the other side? And then you realize this world is just a bubble. So you pop the bubble. We think everything is in the bubble, but the nature of mind is infinite. It is hard because you have such a passion, you want to explain that to people, and it is not an easy thing to do. To try to do that, and it is even harder. It is harder as we develop compassion.

There are two types of compassion, the compassion from samsara, which is good. We help each other, we do things, but it is very limited. But to utilize the Buddha mind, compassion, the one that is truly taught in the Heart Sutra, this is the secret of the Heart Sutra, this compassion is infinite. But in the way it is infinite, also, almost seeing the appearances of suffering in all quarters, there is suffering everywhere.

One night I was transferring merit and realizing this, and then I understood why the statue of the Kuan Yin has a thousand arms or four heads or more, because you feel like you want to split the head into parts to have more capability of passing more compassion. There is a deep sincerity there. It enables one to utilize the Buddha compassion. This is what Shifu did. How did he build this whole organization? He could not have done it with the samsara compassion. His compassion was the compassion of the Buddha. It is great. 

I always think, when I'm doing this, I am so limited. I feel so deficient. So all I can do is just every day try harder and harder to give compassion, every night to send out the compassion. It's stronger, but it has to be stronger than what I have now. And that is what drives me, to want to give this compassion, not just simply to human beings or people we know or people who are sick, but to, in all quarters, to give this compassion to all, to all beings wherever they're at, even those who are unimaginable to us because we've never run into them. It is in this way that we have to try to demonstrate this compassion. It is inconceivable.



Related Interviews:

Practice is No Longer for the Self - An Interview with Gilbert Gutierrez, Part 1

Practice is No Longer for the Self - An Interview with Gilbert Gutierrez, Part 2

Practice is No Longer for the Self - An Interview with Gilbert Gutierrez, Part 3