Dharma Talk

I Alone Am the World Honored One

by Gerry Shishin Wick, Roshi

When the Buddha was born, he walked seven steps and pointed to the heaven with one hand and to the Earth with the other. He said, "Above heaven and below heaven, I alone am the world-honored one."

I alone means altogether everything is nothing but me. How can we make sense of that? Our whole experience up to this point is to distinguish ourselves from others. Not only from others, but we have so many personalities inside of ourselves, we don't know which one is the real one.

The very root of all of our mental afflictions and suffering is our inability to penetrate beyond our ignorance that identifies events and objects as being independent from ourselves, and then grasps after them or pushes them away. You have heard it a thousand times. Every teacher has said that the root of all of our anguish and is our self-grasping ignorance. We think that there is something other than ourselves. Thinking that there is a self also prevents us from practicing zazen effectively.. So if you want to really practice effective, go right after that ignorance. It's a strategy that all generals know. If you want to defeat the enemy, your best strategy is to destroy the leader. The leader of all of our delusions, is self-grasping ignorance.

There are two kinds of ways that we grasp after the self. One is the idea of self in relation to our own existence, our own being. Somehow we think that's there's a self in there. And the other one is the idea of self in relationship to others and to external phenomena in which we separate the self away from others. A common strategy that reinforces out separateness is to refuse to take responsibility for our life by blaming others for our problems.

The three Dharma seals of the Buddha clarified these points. First, he talked about impermanence of everything. We try to identify ourself in relationship to other things, and these other things are totally impermanent, always changing. You know it from your own experience. The mountains are impermanent. The ocean is impermanent. Even the Sun is impermanent. Much more so a human life is impermanent, as is your profession, as are your relationships and your material possessions. Somehow we identify ourselves with these things. It's like building our foundations on quicksand.

Not only are objects impermanent, but the Buddha also says there is no self. Realizing impermanence and seeing the nature of no-self, the third Dharma seal, nirvana or peace , is revealed. Nirvana means to extinguish conflict, by realizing that you and all beings and the great Earth are not two.

We talk about no-self. Why is there no self? Why are objects impermanent? Why are phenomena impermanent? We say everything is empty. Don't be confused, that doesn't mean its blankness or blackness. Our practice isn't to make ourselves blank, or to make ourselves empty as it is commonly understood. Emptiness means that everything is impermanent. Our practice is not to become empty, but to examine and investigate the nature of our ignorance. That means to examine this grasping onto the concept of self; the concept of "I". When the Buddha says, "I alone am the world honored one", it is not the same "I" that we usually identify with. The word alone is derived from "all one". The Buddha can say such an expression because his self is no-self. And being no-self, he identifies with everything which is "all one".

Our emotions are impermanent. They are impossible to grasp. There's a story about a Zen student who came to Master Bankei and he said, "Master, I have an ungovernable temper. How can I cure it?" Bankei said to the student who says that he has a temper that's totally out of control, he says "Bring me your temper." And the student says "Well, I haven't got it right now, so I can't show it to you." Bankei says, "Well then bring it to me when you have it." But he says, "I just can't bring it when it happen to have it, it rises unexpectedly and I would surely lose it before I got to you." Then Bankei says, "In that case, it cannot be your true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it and your parents did not give it to you, so it must come from outside. It must arise from outside yourself and I suggest whenever it arises in you, you beat yourself with a stick until the temper can't stand it and runs away."

When you have the presence of mind to try to take care of your temper, it's not there. When strong emotions come up, that's the best time to study the self. From time to time some of you have said to me "Oh, I'm too depressed to do zazen. I'm too excited to do zazen. I'm too angry to do zazen. I'm too afraid to do zazen." That's the best time to do zazen. You have that juicy emotion right there, you can really examine it, sit down with it, see what it is, how it arises. At those times, it seems to have existence, then put your attention to it. Really study it. How? Experience it, see what it is. Let it be there. What we do is we run away from it. Everything seems to have true existence, but when we look at it we realize what the Diamond Sutra says: "This fleeting world is like a fantasy, like a dream."

We all have dreams. We know how real our dreams can seem, particularly a dream where we are being chased or being attacked. You can wake up from a dream actually sweating with adrenaline pumping all through your body. Or you can have a sexual fantasy and think it's real in a dream, and when you wake up it's totally gone. That's what the Diamond Sutra says "this fleeting world is like a dream." Everything we see, think and feel from the perspective of our self-grasping mind, our self-grasping ignorance, is a dream. It is as real as a dream. Because our mind is obscured by ignorance we are convinced that everything has independent existence, this mistaken view is the very source of our desire and pride and greed and hatred and all of the other afflictions of the mind.

But if everything is a dream, what's real? We can't take the analogy of a dream too far. We shouldn't fall into extremes. If we think that nothing exists, that's nihilism, complete negation of everything. But that's not the case either. If we didn't exist, we couldn't practice the Way. We couldn't have faith in the teachings of the Buddha, nor could we realize the Way, nor would we come into contact with the events of our life. We do exist. Definitely we exist, but not in the way that we think.

When Yamaoka was a brash student, he visited Master Dokuon. Wanting to impress the Master, he said, "There is no mind, there's no body, there's no Buddha, there's no better, no worse, there's no Master, no student, there's no giving no receiving. What we see and feel is not real. None of these seeming things really exist." Master Dokoun said nothing. Suddenly, he struck out with staff and gave the student a big whap. And the student jumped back in anger. Calmly the Master says, "Since none of these things really exist and all is emptiness, where does that anger come from?"

What is it? Don't fall into one side. Don't fool yourself into thinking there is a self, but don't fool yourself into thinking that nothing exists. So if everything is empty, what is emptiness empty of? That's what the Sixth Patriarch said, "Don't seek after the truth, just cease to cherish your opinions." Empty yourself of the wrong view of the independent self-existence of all phenomena. In other words, don't separate yourself from yourself. Don't separate yourself from others. Just live your life as it is.