Metta Practice/Tonglen

Metta Practice

We will do the
1. Robe Verse
2. Ten minutes of Zazen
3. Metta Practice: practice leader may give an extempore speech concerning each category before leading the recitation.
4. Verse of Atonement
5. The Four Vows
 
👏 Great robe of liberation, field far beyond form and emptiness, wearing the Tathagata’s teaching, saving all beings.

When everyone is settled, practice leader says "Zazen."

🔔 🔔 🔔

[ZAZEN]

🔔 🔔  🙇 

METTA VERSES

🔔 YOURSELF

1. May I be free of suffering; may I feel safe and still
2. May I be free of enmity; may I be loving, grateful and kind.
3. May I be healthy and at ease in all my ills.
4. May I be at peace, embracing all conditions of life.

🔔 🙇 

LOVED ONE 

1. May they be free of suffering; may they feel safe and still.
2. May they be free of enmity; may they be loving, grateful and kind.
3. May they be healthy and at ease in all their ills.
4. May they be at peace, embracing all conditions of life

🔔 🙇 

 FRIEND

1. May they be free of suffering; may they feel safe and still.
2. May they be free of enmity; may they be loving, grateful and kind.
3. May they be healthy and at ease in all their ills
4. May they be at peace, embracing all conditions of life

🔔 🙇 

STRANGER

1. May they be free of suffering; may they feel safe and still.
2. May they be free of enmity; may they be loving, grateful and kind.
3. May they be healthy and at ease in all their ills.
4. May they be at peace, embracing all conditions of life

🔔 ENEMY or Difficult Person

1. May they be free of suffering; may they feel safe and still.
2. May they be free of enmity; may they be loving, grateful and kind.
3. May they be healthy and at ease in all their ills.
4. May they be at peace, embracing all conditions of life.

ALL BEINGS

1. May we, together with all beings, be free of suffering; may we feel safe and still.
2. May we, together with all beings, be free of enmity; may we be loving, grateful and kind.
3. May we, together with all beings, be healthy and at ease in all our ills.
4. May we, together with all beings, be at peace, embracing all conditions of life        

🔔 🙏
 
VERSE OF ATONEMENT:

👏 All my ancient tangled karma
From beginningless greed, ill will, and ignorance
Born of body, speech, and mind
I now fully avow.     

🙏

FOUR VOWS

👏  Beings are numberless; I vow to free them.
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.
Buddha’s way is unsurpassable; I vow to realize it.

Beings are numberless; I vow to free them!
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them!
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them!
Buddha’s way is unsurpassable; I vow to realize it!

Beings are numberless; I vow to free them…
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them…
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them…
Buddha’s way is unsurpassable; I vow to realize it…

🙏

 

 Tonglen

This practice takes a little over 30 minutes.

1. Robe Verse
2. Ten minutes of Zazen
3. Tonglen Practice: five minutes for each visualization. Bow with the bell at the end of each period. 
4. Verse of Atonement
5. The Four Vows
 
👏 Great robe of liberation, field far beyond form and emptiness, wearing the Tathagata’s teaching, saving all beings.

🔔 🔔 🔔

ZAZEN 

🔔 🔔  🙏

🔔 YOURSELF

Visualize a Person in Need, in this instance yourself.
Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion. 
(five minutes)
🔔 🙏 

LOVED ONE

Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion.
(five minutes)
🔔 🙏 

FRIEND

Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion.
(five minutes)
🔔 🙏 

STRANGER

Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion.
(five minutes)
🔔 🙏

ENEMY or Difficult Person

Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion.
(five minutes)
🔔 🙏 

ALL BEINGS

Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion.     
(five minutes)
🔔 🙏
 
VERSE OF ATONEMENT:

👏 All my ancient tangled karma
From beginningless greed, ill will, and ignorance
Born of body, speech, and mind
I now fully avow.     

🔔 🙏 

FOUR VOWS

👏  Beings are numberless; I vow to free them.
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.
Buddha’s way is unsurpassable; I vow to realize it.

Beings are numberless; I vow to free them!
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them!
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them!
Buddha’s way is unsurpassable; I vow to realize it!

Beings are numberless; I vow to free them…
Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them…
Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them…
Buddha’s way is unsurpassable; I vow to realize it…

🔔 🙏

PRAYER FOR ONE WHO BRINGS CHAOS

For you who deny the beingness of others
May you dwell in the holiness of your body

For you who crushes the most vulnerable
May you be cradled in love from all corners of the cosmos

For you who deny the past and mistake force for justice
May you have strength to hold shame and courage to speak

For you who believes that violence is the way to peace
May you be held in the warmth of protection

For you who despise those you do not understand
May you reclaim your innocence and beauty

For you who tears families apart and excludes
May you be seated at the table of true belonging

For you who seek power to dominate and suppress
May you arrive at an ocean of welcome and delight

For you who believes that empathy is the enemy
May you not run from your feelings

For you who take all they can and keep poverty alive
May you know the freedom of limitless generosity

For you who deny truth and sow seeds of division
May your eyes shine with deepest wisdom and clarity

For you who believe loving differently is dangerous
May you be rocked in the arms of all the ancestors.

In Place 62

 

With apologies to Shitou 

 

I've built a fiberglass-roofed hut
where there's nothing to take away.

After eating,
I conk out.

When the hut was completed,
it was a children's playhouse.

It had long been abandoned —
covered by blackberries.

Sometimes I live at the hut,
trying out Nagarjuna.

No need to go shopping.
No movies, no popcorn.

Though the hut is nine feet square,
Nowhere is there a place not here.

Within, an old nun
gawks out the window.

With her "instinctive knowing what to do"
she trusts being/time.

The neighbors can't help wondering —
what's going on in there?

For now, the old crone is present,
losing track of Meaning.

Knowing she does not know up or down,
she looks straight ahead.

A wide window below green cottonwoods--
five star hotels can't compare with it.

Just nestling in her zero-g chair
all things are settled.

Thus, this mountain nun
doesn't squint at circumstances.

Living here she no longer
hankers for escape.

Who would proudly arrange place settings,
trying to lure guests?

Doing as a Buddha does
cannot not be what a Buddha is.

Thusness can't be
looked toward or away from.

Meet the lineages and spiritual friends,
absorb their guidance.

Salvage fence boards to build a hut
and don't give up.

When your begging bowl breaks,
which it will, relax into your day.

Open your face
and walk, de-stressed.

Thousands of teachers
babble, but the message isn't garbled.

If you want to benefit
from dwelling in your hut,

Don't expect to be polishing that begging bowl
forever.

 

 

In Place 61

Last day in this hut, she takes in

sun, shadow, familiar walls;

collected things seem to her

reluctant as she to leave

The farm has passed beyond her strength and will, and she turns toward town.

Though we do not preach the doctrine,
Unasked the flowers bloom in spring;
They fall and scatter,
They turn to dust. 

--Ikkyu, tr. R. H. Blyth

In Place 60

Set up screen and altar, face the sangha,

Bow and bow again, repeating words,

Shaving (being shaved), 

Becoming (being remade)

 

It's April 2020, the pandemic is in full swing, and this in-person transition from private to public nun-hood takes place by remote means. Some forty people attend. Shonin's spouse handles the handing over of razor, robes and bowls.

If you have a rule, go by the rule; if you have no rule, go by the example.
-- comment on verse appended to 85th case of the Blue Cliff Record, tr. Cleary

 

In Place 59

A plague strikes; she moves to the hut

for ten days. Wheezing Heart Sutra

is hard, so just think the words

and pretend it is not thinking 

 

 

In the first week of March, 2020, the farm's gate is closed on advice of the government. It turns out she has already inhaled something. Things seem a little crazy in the hospitals out there, so she elects to sit it out alone, visiting the family through the laptop's video camera. She treks to the hut with baskets of food and sets up cough-keeping. Not sufficiently aware of her precarity to be frightened, she lives slowly, cooks small meals, drinks homely teas, wonders how the little dog is doing.

Without hindrance, the mind has no fear.
--Heart Sutra