Dharma Talk

Parental Mind

by Gerry Shishin Wick, Roshi

In the same way that a parent cares for an only child, keep the Three Treasures in your mind. A parent irrespective of poverty or difficult circumstances loves and raises a child with care. How deep is love like this? Only a parent can understand it. A parent protects the child from the cold, and shades him from the hot sun but no concern for his or her own personal welfare. Only a person in whom this mind has arisen can understand it. And only one in whom this attitude has become second nature can fully realize it. This is the ultimate in being a parent. In the same manner, when you handle water, rice or anything else you must have the affectionate and caring concern of a parent raising a child.

-Dogen Zenji in Instructions to the Cook

What can we say about this parental mind? It's pretty obvious. Dogen Zenji lays it out. He says in order to really understand it, you have to experience it. It's like anything else in our practice. Bodhidharma says it's a practice "beyond words and phrases." No matter how much we talk about it, that's not it. You have all heard the expression, "the map isn't the territory", or "the menu isn't the meal". It's the same sort of thing. So Dogen Zenji emphasizes, "You really have to have that mind arise before you can understand it." Only when you have really integrated it into your life can you realize it.

In Japan there is an unusual service community called Itoin. They take in misfits,-- usually young men who were too difficult for their families to deal with. The directors were asked to take care of these young men who came. Tenkosan, the founder of Itoin made sure that these young men weren't blamed for whatever they had been doing. The so-called bad son or brother almost certainly became a new man overnight. He questioned several young men who had been at Itoin for some time. He said, "When you came, your parents said that you had been behaving badly, but now you seem to be a good man. Can you tell me at what time you changed thus?" And the typical answer was something like this: "The thing I least expected was that no one at Itoin blamed me for the faults which my family had always reproached me. Even when they did not openly blame me, I always felt their inward reproach and the home atmosphere gave a ceaseless sense of oppression. I did not always want to sleep late in the morning but I used to stay in bed because I dreaded seeing their unpleasant faces. I really did have a conscience and sometimes I would get up early and try to do some work, but they would sneer at me and make fun of me and so that I returned to my bad habits. When I was sent to Itoin, I had a feeling of strong resentment and was certain I could never endure staying in such a lonely place even for a few days. The strange thing was that after the first night, my rebelliousness died down under the gentle guidance of the directors. What won my heart most of all was your remark 'I too am guilty of wrong doing." To my ears which had constantly had to listen to my own wrong doing, your remark was enormously impressive. Furthermore, you never blamed me at all, instead you blamed yourself. My rebellious feeling vanished, I slept peacefully the first night and woke to the sound of the wooden clappers. I got up and worked at sweeping and dusting like the others. Although my ankles ached a little during the sutra chanting at the m

I think this anecdote illustrates parental mind. It is so easy to experience parental mind just towards those who are close to us, but how can we expand it beyond our own children or our own immediate family or our own relatives. Dogen Zenji talking about the Buddha said, "In demonstrating his parental mind, he did it unconditionally without a thought of profit or gain." That's one of the key points, without a thought of profit or gain. Reflecting on our own lives practically everything that we do is for the sake of profit or gain of some kind. And always it's a case of somebody gains, somebody else has to lose.

We have a precept not to put others down and raise yourself up. The whole point is to serve the Three Treasures. What are the Three Treasures? It's our life and what is our life?. It is the life of ourselves and everything else. Shakyamuni Buddha was enlightened, as many of you know, according to the sutras, he said, "I and all beings everywhere are simultaneously enlightened." No way does he separate himself, not only from other people but from other things. Without having at least a glimpse, even some kind of intellectual understanding of what the Buddha means when he said that, how can we function this parental mind that Dogen Zenji talks about? Taking care of everything is not just taking care of the zendo, keeping it clean, keeping the altar in good order, then going out and treating the people in the community or the sangha or in greater Denver roughly, crudely.

I remember this comedian on TV who said, "Isn't it amazing when you are driving down the street, that everybody who drives faster than you is an idiot, and everyone who drives slower than you is a jerk." Finding the right balance is the most important thing.

I really like that story of Tenkosan who says "Unless I am perfect, I can't do anything. But not being perfect, I have to do something." So what did he do? "Being imperfect, will you allow me in my imperfection to guide you. He is like Master Joshu who being an accomplished Zen master went on his pilgrimage, at the age of sixty. When he started he said that if he meets a young child who can teach him, he will learn from that child, and if he meets an old man whom he can teach, he'll teach that man.

How can each of us be that open? Take good care of your parental mind, and your joyous mind, and your magnanimous mind. That's the very last line in Instructions to the Cook. "Do not forget the attitude behind living out your life with joy, having a deep concern of a parent and carrying out all of your activities with magnanimity." It was written in the spring 1237.