Dear Sangha,
I recently returned from a two week retreat at Mountain Lamp Community, a lay retreat center in our tradition in the foothills of the Cascade mountains, in the state of Washington, close to the Canadian border. A very green and very beautiful place and a wonderful, devoted and skillful community. The retreat focused on the Flower Ornament Scripture, the Avatamsaka Sutra, specifically on the last chapter, which is considered a Sutra in its own right, the Gandavyuha Sutra. The 1600 page Avatamsaka sutra is thought to have been written about 500 years after the Buddha lived, around the year 100 BCE. It was first translated into Chinese from Sanskrit around the year 200 ACE with a complete translation accomplished around 400.
Thich Nhat Hanh wrote that he thinks the poetry in the Avatamsaka Sutra is the most beautiful poetry every composed by humankind. It is richly imaginative, vast in scope and profoundly spiritual. I think the effect of entering into it is to be opened up to the infinite richness of the world in which we live. It is an invitation and a vehicles to carry us into the ultimate dimension. Interestingly this final chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra is titled “Entry into the Realm of Reality.”
I think the message of this sutra is the message of Interbeing, that we live both in the ultimate dimension and the historical dimension simultaneously. We are both wave and water, individual human being living in time and space and the whole eternal, infinite source of everything. The poetry is skillful means to seduce us into a new way of imagining ourselves and the nature of existence. It helps us feel our way into this new mode of consciousness. It is also a call to devote ourselves to practicing the way of awakening and serving all beings.
This Sunday we’ll try and find our way into this new mode of experience in which we can move through our world and our lives fully awake to the miracle and the miracles of our existence that pervade our lives, and sensitive and skillful in responding to what is happening in the present moment.
I look forward to being with you.
Blessings,
Keith Mesecher
Universal Emptiness of the Heart
practicing mindfulness in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh.
Meeting in person: SUNDAYS 4-5:30 pm PST
Bard Hall at
First Unitarian Universalist Church (UU)4190 Front St, San Diego CA 92103
Parking is provided in the Ace lot with a church pass (available onsite)