American Buddhism--Oneness

Oneness

A talk by Rev. Koyo S. Kubose given at the 1999 Visakha Festival in Evanston, IL.

I want to talk a little bit about Oneness. Oneness is such a great thing because it is so ambiguous. We don't know what it is so we can talk a lot about it. Some words are so broad they mean a lot of things. Oneness is a major teaching is one of these.

When groups come to visit from different religious backgrounds, we strike a bell and tell them we start our services by hitting this bell. They usually only have a few minutes to visit so I can't wait until the bell goes completely quiet because I have other things to talk about.

So usually I'll listen for a while and I'd say “it's still going” and they'll say “yeahhhhh...” Sometimes I joke and say we call this our energizer bunny bell it just keeps going and going. I talk about its' psychological function to empty out so we can hear the Dharma. More important than what we are going to get is what we let go.

That emptiness is the crucial essence of the value of something. Look at this room, we think this room has beautiful walls, floor, and ceiling. We see that solidness. But the function of the room is the space that is created. It is the same for a cup. That space is what is the essence. Even though we think it is the solid thing. In a painting it is the empty spaces that comes alive. You have to read between the lines of a great spiritual book, not the actual words.

The empty space in a bell is what enables the sound vibrations to make that sound. Without that empty space, forget it. If you are a full teacup, forget it, that tea is probably stale. You tasted that tea and it was a great tea. But, if you try to save that tea, forget it.

If you have a great spiritual experience but you try to save it and say “this is my spiritual gem,” forget it. It will spoil, like a ripe fruit. We like to save our spiritual experiences in our little sack. We like to think, “Oh, this gem and that gem. Oh that retreat I went to, I got some insights.” This kind of spiritual materialism is very seductive. We know what physical materialism is—what kinds of cars and houses we want to get, but we also accumulate other kinds of treasurers. It is very seductive and has to be emptied out.

If we listen to a sound of a bell sometimes we try to use words to go beyond words. We know words are tricky and mislead us whenever we open our mouths. That is why some sounds are a purer form to hear the Dharma instead of words.

In order to hear that kind of Dharma there has to be a certain kind of emptiness. Sometimes, we ask can you hear that soundless sound when our physical ear can not hear the physical sound anymore.

Can you hear the soundless sound? Why are these kinds of phrases used in Buddhism?

We can cynically say “oh, it's word games.” But we are trying to communicate something beyond the words themselves. It is not a logical, intellectual endeavor we are on when talking about one's own personal, deep spiritual journey.

What is a soundless sound? You have to listen very carefully. Maybe it is saying too much but it is so nice that the bell sound fades away and you can hardly hear it. It gets so tiny it is sort of inside of you and not outside of you any more. It is just a resonation, a little vibration that is probably part of your body too, so the sound is inside you. You can carry that sound around, or what that sound means or its impact—to empty out and be still so that we can receive the Dharma.

It's not out there anymore, it becomes something alive inside us. We can't express it, it's not a physical thing anymore. Become one with the sound. You receive a gift of the sound...the sound of the gift of the teaching. Some of us receive a fancy gift and never take the paper off. We never open it. But, we should unwrap it and use it, receiving the gift means integrating it with our life. This means bringing it in and using it in your life. We receive these gifts all the time. Become one with that sound.

I want to talk about Oneness. I made a formula that can be both fun and serious.

I wrote a formula down called the
Way of Oneness formula. It says U stands for right understanding. We know that is first noble truth in the eightfold path. U equals two I's and the I's are impermanence and interdependency. You could call it dependent origination, karma, or Indra's net; they all talk about a lot of major concepts associated with these things. It is Non-self. Two I's, impermanence, constant change, doctrine of impermanence.

This is a very core Buddhist teaching of impermanence and interdependency. To understand, to have right understanding, means to look out on the world and be able to see impermanence and interdependency.

It is said instead of having a lot of books just sit in an empty room with a rose in a bud glass and watch that rose through the day, starting out fresh, wilting with the heat of the afternoon, see impermanence. Of course everything changes. Flowers placed on the alters are examples of this. Flowers can symbolize impermanence, this human world we live in. The flowers are beautiful but they will wilt. Even if they are plastic they aren't going to last forever. We might want something beautiful to last. We want our health, our youth, and our life to last. We know about attachment, we know about wrong views. But, truth or reality, as it is, not what we want it to be, so fundamentally underlying human life and human suffering.

Interdependency: When seeing a flower can you see the compost? Look out at the sky and see the clouds. Do we see the piece of paper? Interdependency. Can we see these things?

So as I play around with this I say these are the two I's that look out at the world. A play on words. We could say Buddhist eyes but it is really life's realities. We come from a Buddhist tradition so we talk Buddhism but the words get in the way. Two eyes, isn't that neat?

If we can see that then it gives rise to two A's because we add in the two a's here. I put the two A's to stand for acceptance and appreciation because when you have right understanding you understand about impermanence. You understand that death is the mother of beauty. You understand the importance of suffering and pain. You understand the importance of tears when a loved one should die. We don't think #&147;Oh, no one should die, I should have no tears in my life.” That is impossible and irrational. It can not be. If something good lasts forever, can you appreciate it? Never.

Death is the mother of beauty, of love—that kind of oneness that goes over dualities. We aren't talking about destroying duality's, but viewing them from a higher or broader perspective, which is what wisdom is. It is always moving back, never concluding, when we can see out like that, when we can really see interdependency, then we accept what reality is. We don't fight it so much. Acceptance is a tremendous thing. It is a strong acceptance as opposed to a defeated acceptance. This is where words get in the way again. You can't do anything about it so you have to accept it. It is a resigned acceptance. It is a dynamic acceptance. Or Kubose Gyomay Sensei would say “accept-slash—transcend” as one word sort of. Two sides of one thing. Accept—transcend is one of his catch phrase teachings.

What are you going to do? Spend your whole life saying “I'm short, I'm short.” Accept your shortness (and you can put in your own handicap here) and be yourself and live your life. You don't have to say be the best short person you can be. If you accept yourself, your shortness, completely, then your shortness is transcended. You're not victimized by it.

If I was 6’5" with my athletic ability I'd be in the NBA, no kidding, but I'm short, so what am I going to do? I'm Japanese-American, maybe if my face was white I'd be making a lot of money as some executive. On and on and on. My physical death? Unacceptable!

Acceptance is a tremendous thing. I think hand in hand with acceptance is appreciation. All of these all hang together. You really appreciate this flower right now. You appreciate this moment right now. This moment is the only moment, the absolute moment, not relative compared to other moments. There is no guarantee for the next moment. We might be gone in 20 years, but how about next month? Tomorrow? This moment is unique, is special, make it genuine. Every day is the last day.

It's not “I see you every Sunday” or “Oh, I see my co-workers every Monday.” Sometimes you need a tragedy in order to wake you up to these kinds of things. We start appreciating every little thing. We appreciate being able to hear a bell, to feel that I am standing up, to appreciate our sensory experiences. And we are so grateful for the Dharma. We can be grateful for our shoes, for the table and not for just food and other people that are significant in our lives. Everything becomes more intimate: communication, inanimate objects, everything. Gratitude is a better word than appreciation. It has a deeper meaning but it doesn't start with an A so...

Then you have E. E is enlightened living. Along with acceptance and appreciation is enlightened living. Sometimes in my fool-around-life says A like A-1, top, number 1. You might think “ahhhh, enlightened living that is the way to live.” The sound of A is like “ah” You got two A's so it's not “ah” it's “ahhhh”. That's my fool around mind.

Some people want to put another A in there for awareness. Some said the U might mean You. So anyway you want to illustrate or elaborate feel free. There's no copyright on the Dharma.

You can see the oneness. Let's circle this formula. There are some notes about how this is just a structure or format. It can be adapted to any tradition or religion. It is very universal, it is about life. You can put your own terminology in there. And of course it is good to point out that life can not be reduced to a formula. We are just fooling around here a little bit. I thought it was neat that all the vowels are represented.

Let me end by telling you about a little experience that happened with my father. His book, Everyday Suchness, is a classic book and is very popular. People always want him to autograph it. So he was standing in the foyer after service and someone came up to him and said “Will you autograph my Everyday Suchness book?” Now he's getting older, he's 94 this year. His handwriting is a little shaky, and he was holding the book with no table.

He usually writes “Oneness” and signs his name. I was standing next to him with this person, watching him sign the book. He began to write “Oneness”
O - n - e - n - e - s - s
but because of the instability that second N got a little extra hump on it and it looked like an M.

And that spells One Mess. He saw this and said “I messed this up,” and he was going to get another book. I grabbed it. It's a serendipitous thing. It's how the Dharma is always working in mysterious ways. So I said “This is great. Wow!” And I saved that book, because it is tremendous, isn't it. We think about Oneness, that is such a goody, goody word. Everybody likes Oneness it's cheerful, it's one of the hooray words. But the oneness of life is really One Mess. You see Oneness you would think is very neat and clean. Everything in its place.

But in life things are all messed up. Sometimes babies die. Sometimes different things happen that are not supposed to happen in the natural order of usual things. Things get messed up. The plans of mice and men... It's human life. It's messy. You are not in control. Life is One Mess. It's okay. It's okay. Did you ever see the Buddha? His mudra is telling you it is Okay. And this Okay is when things are not okay. You know the book “I'm OK You're OK?” on human growth potential? Our saying is I'm not OK, you're not OK and that's okay.

Rev. Koyo Sunnan Kubose attended the University of California at Berkeley and continued with postgraduate work, earning an M.A. from San Francisco State University, and Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Iowa. He has been on the Psychology faculties at the University of North Carolina, University of Hawaii, and the University of Wisconsin Center System. He studied Buddhism in Japan—combining studies in Shin Buddhism at the Eastern Buddhist Society of Otani University with meditation practice under Zen masters of both Soto and Rinzai traditions.

Rev. Koyo Kubose served on the ministerial staff at the Buddhist Temple of Chicago from 1983 to 1995 to help further his father's work of creatively nurturing Buddhism in America. He served as the Executive Director of the Japanese American Service Committee from 1995-1996. In 1997 he began working full-time towards establishing the Rev. Gyomay M. Kubose Dharma Legacy as a religious educational organization dedicated to carrying on his father's lifework.

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