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Guided Meditation: Meditate like an Interbeing; Dharmette: Savoring the Flavors of Refuge (5 of 5) Being a Refuge for All Beings - Ying Chen, 陈颖

The following talk was given by Ying Chen, 陈颖 at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 30, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Good morning and a good day, everyone. We're coming to the last day of this weekday in our series. I feel rather quiet right now and just savoring this sense of Sangha and connectedness. So maybe that's enough for us to begin—just a sense of a welcoming to the Sangha, to the collective blessing to be able to practice together like this.

Guided Meditation: Meditate like an Interbeing

So, close your eyes if you'd like, and come into a meditative posture with the celebrations and joy, delight, feeling goodness already, coming home to the refuge of the Sangha, coming home to ourselves. The Dharma is in being good, here and now.

Awake and aware to this moment, sitting in our own body, mind, and heart, and also the collective. Maybe the sense of boundary of this being is soft.

We can feel the connection with the earth, the space. The late Thích Nhất Hạnh¹, a Zen Master, coined the term 'interbeing'². We are interbeing.

Each of us is uniquely ourselves, and yet we are in a collective.

A poem from the late Thích Nhất Hạnh called "Interbeing":

The sun has entered me. The sun has entered me together with the cloud and the river. I myself have entered the river, and I have entered the sun with the cloud and the river. There has not been a moment when we do not interpenetrate.

But before the sun entered me, the sun was in me, also the cloud and the river. Before I entered the river, I was already in it. There has not been a moment when we have not interbeen.

Therefore, you know that as long as you continue to breathe, I continue to be in you.

Dharmette: Savoring the Flavors of Refuge (5 of 5) Being a Refuge for All Beings

Yesterday, I spoke about this notion of living as our own refuge, or making ourselves a refuge, and then letting the Dharma be one's refuge. When we practice with this, little by little, what we may discover is that we become more and more safe to ourselves. Maybe all parts of ourselves, not just the parts that we like or are pleasant, but also the parts that may feel challenged or challenging. Maybe the insecure or the shy part of ourselves can feel safe and free to be herself, himself, or themselves within ourselves, without feeling that somehow they might get diminished or they have to be defensive. You know, "somehow I shouldn't be like this, I should be stronger," or whatever. And that's just demanding for the parts of ourselves to be other than what they are. It's hard enough to be insecure, feeling pain—why add more demands? Why add more pressure? Why contract more?

And so through this process of creating and living as the refuge for oneself, gradually we can begin to feel the bigness of this process. There's something opening up within us that has a capacity to hold the whole of ourselves. And it doesn't stop there. When we are safe and when we are vast for ourselves, others can feel safe with us. Other beings can feel safe around us. And so in this way, living as a refuge of one's own can also be a refuge for other beings, the whole world at large. This is what I'd like to share today, which is the notion of being a refuge for all beings.

There is a wonderful sutta in the Majjhima Nikāya³ called "The Simile of the Cloth." Some of you may know this. Towards the end of the sutta, the Buddha shared these verses I'd like to read for you:

To make yourself a refuge for all beings: if you speak no falsehood, nor do harm for living beings, nor take what is not offered, with faith and free from avarice...

In the process of making oneself a refuge, one's own virtuous heart, virtuous conduct, creates a virtuous field. And so when people are around this kind of field, they don't have to be concerned that they're going to be lied to, or they're going to be harmed in different ways. The person's calm and ease is a field for others to feel as well, and maybe it helps to calm and ease others' anxieties and fear.

I've mentioned Thích Nhất Hạnh a few times today, and the late Master Thích Nhất Hạnh was a prime example of such a refuge or such a sanctuary for so many people who were struggling at the times of the war or times of difficulties. So there's a process of living or making refuge for oneself that has a natural extension to being a refuge for all beings. And there is a reciprocal effect as well. The more goodness and safety there is in this world, the more support each of us will have in our own cultivation, and then we feed out to the world. And so these are kind of two sides of the coin: cultivating being a refuge for ourselves and being a sanctuary for all beings.

There is one thing I would like to point out. This notion of being a refuge for all beings is not meant to create some sort of identity for ourselves. "Look at me, you know, somehow others should come to me because I am so-and-so." That's just turning the refuge into an identity, into a self. You know, just saying that, you might begin to feel the tightness, the narrowing, the contraction that comes down. It's losing the boundlessness and the vastness of this aspect of being a refuge for all beings.

So this is not—being the refuge for all beings is not to create identity or create a sense of self. Rather, people feel, around the people who express natural care, natural responsiveness, and wisdom and compassion, this sense of being a sanctuary is a natural Dharma manifestation or expression.

In our meditation, you may begin to feel this through our inner cultivation and the deepening of insight into our own nature. It can become increasingly clear that we are truly interbeing. We are truly interrelated, as Thích Nhất Hạnh described. There is a deep connection between all beings and the environment, the whole planet, the whole world. So when we're not caught up in our own selfing eddies, we can feel this kind of natural interconnectedness. Everything belongs. Nothing is outside of this vast being. And so there is a refuge for ourselves, and there is a refuge for everyone, for all beings.

I'd like to close by reading this poem again, a poem I dropped in during our meditation. This is the poem of "Interbeing," and I received this from a teacher, Phillip Moffitt⁴, one of my teachers, on a poetry day. It really attached to me. So, by Thích Nhất Hạnh, it's from his poetry book, Call Me by My True Names. And so here it is again:

The sun has entered me. The sun has entered me together with the cloud and with the river. I myself have entered the river, and I have entered the sun with the cloud and the river. There has not been a moment when we do not interpenetrate.

But before the sun entered me, the sun was in me, also the cloud and the river. Before I entered the river, I was already in it. There has not been a moment when we have not interbeen.

Therefore, you know that as long as you continue to breathe, I continue to be in you.

So with that, we end this week's exploration around refuge, the different flavors of it: the Triple Gem, the refuge of our own, and for all beings. May this exploration be something meaningful and evocative, and maybe even confusing, which is all good.

And so may whatever benefit that arose out of this exploration and our practicing together, may it nourish our own heart and mind, may it enliven our bodies. And may the benefit be shared wide open in all directions.

May all beings have a clear, calm mind, a peaceful and loving heart. May all beings have vital, healthy bodies. And may all beings know wonder, peace, joy, and the liberating wisdom in this life, just as it is.

Thank you, friends. Be well.