Atonement

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

From the new Soto Shu translation of the San Ge Mon, the Verse of Repentance,

All my past and harmful karma,

born from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion,

through body, speech, and mind,

I now fully avow.

For Zen Buddhists, these words have particular meaning. They speak to our understanding of the deep an intricate interconnection of everything, past, present, future, cause, effect, and release.

Each morning we recite this verse, knowing that our behavior is most important. Our behavior creates good. Our behavior creates bad. These behaviors are remembered by ourselves and others. Good and bad are conditions within which other things grow, both good and bad. When we do harm, harm is added; when we do something healthful, health is added. We see in each the possibility of evil and the possibility of good.

So, we acknowledge these do not exist apart from us; they are us. No devil, no god, just us. Confronting this truth is very difficult as it requires us to understand thoroughly that everything is ultimately our responsibility. Everything.

We could say that our current bad attitude is a result of our parents, thus we live in their bad karma. This would be true. Yet, when we look deeply into our own nature and see our True Self, the self that existed before our parents were born and will be in our great, great grandchildren, as well, we see this is also false. There is no parent, no child, no past, no future. Just the minute to minute manifestation of Buddhanature.

OK, so we inherit, and we plant. What we do with what we inherit is ours and what we plant is ours. Some of us are unaware of this fact. Some of us live in delusion, believing there is a god and a devil who are apart from us and that the world is thus divided. As Bodhisattvas it is our commitment to assist them, to help them, guide them, to see the light of non-duality.

This simple verse allows us to keep in mind precisely where we fit, that is, dead center, in the universe. Each of us, small universes reflecting each other, yet deeply interactive.

The last line of the verse is crucial: I now fully avow. We do not use such words today in everyday discourse. Perhaps we should. According to American Heritage Dictionary, to avow means

1. To acknowledge openly, boldly, and unashamedly; confess: avow guilt. or 2. To state positively.

I would rather understand "guilt" as "responsible" but guilt is also true. We moderns don't like to think of ourselves as guilty of much of anything, we'd rather feel responsible, as if there were a difference. Either way, to avow is to acknowledge our part in what we have created, good bad or indifferent, and to do so boldly, directly, and without flinching.

In contemporary times, we promote the notion that we are OK. We like to think that our behavior is not all that important, certainly not as bad as someone else's. When we are caught we immediately shift responsibility to others. In this way we seem like Teflon. Nothing sticks to us, we think. Yet this is an illusion as well as a serious flaw in our character and a shortcoming of perception.

Moreover, it also takes us away from our humanity, for to be human means to be self-aware and self-awareness carries acknowledgment of responsibility. In the end, this short verse brings us home to ourselves, it wraps us in our humanity like a warm blanket and offers us a way to become better human beings.

What will we do with our awareness? What will we do with our responsibility? This choice is ours and ours alone. Chose wisely.

Be well.