Waking at daybreak, my sisters and I, dancing with delight, would run to the Christmas tree and tear open our presents. It was the pinnacle of our year – the tinsel and the fake holly – the nativity play at school, the Christmas carols we sang to our neighbours with all those words about joy, goodwill, peace and generosity. The ‘festive season’ is a perfect Dharma gate for practising Dana, the first of the ten Paramitas, but of course the spirit of love and generosity has no season at all but pervades all seasons.

Aitken Roshi writes, “It is with the Dana Paramita that the Buddha’s teaching of universal harmony is put into practice. Mutual interdependence becomes mutual inter-support. Dana is the spirit and act of generosity. Its salutary effects are endless, and they multiply beyond measure at each point of renewal. The Earth itself flourishes by what Ralph Waldo Emerson calls the endless circulation of the divine charity.’” 1

’The wind sows the seed, the sun evaporates the sea, the wind blows the vapour to the field…the rain feeds the plant, the plant feeds the animal. The very stars hold themselves on course through a mutual interchange of energy.’ 2

As we chant in our Evening Dedication, Birds and trees and stars and we ourselves come forth in perfect harmony.

And then I read about the endless, amazing circulation of divine sound, in The Book of Noises – Notes on the Auraculus.
’A dawn chorus circles the entire planet continuously as daybreak sweeps from east to west and birdsong begins across each continent and island in turn. Meanwhile, in the global ocean, a vast front of tiny clicks and pops passes at 1,000mph from east to west as phytoplankton begin to synthesise and release tiny bubbles of oxygen to the surface. (Phytoplankton are microscopic plant-like organisms which are the base of the marine food web, and play a key role in removing carbon dioxide from the air.) All the while, the tides – pulled by a Moon that is falling, ever so slowly, away from the Earth – push and suck on rocks and beaches, making sand swish and pebbles clack.’ 3

Dogen, in his Shobo Genzo, reminds us of the Bodhisattva’s four methods of guidance – giving, kind speech, beneficial action and identity action. He says, ’Giving means non-greed – not to covet. Not to covet means not to curry favour. Whether it is of teaching or of material things, each gift has its value and is worth giving.’4

As well as generosity, this time of year is an excellent reminder to practice kind speech. Dogen again: ’When you see sentient beings, you arouse the heart of compassion and offer words of loving care. In the secular world, there is the custom of asking after someone’s health. In the Buddha way there is the phrase, “Please treasure yourself.’ Be willing to practice it for this entire present life; do not give up, world after world, life after life. Kind speech is the basis for reconciling rulers and subduing enemies. Know that kind speech arises from a kind heart and a kind heart from the seed of a compassionate heart. Ponder the fact that kind speech is not just praising the merit of others; it has the power to turn the destiny of the nation.’

In dedicating our sutras, we turn the virtue of the recitation back to the Buddhas and ancestral teachers in gratitude for their guidance. We constantly receive that gift of their teaching, and constantly send it around again.6 And every single day, birdsong joins the dawn chorus that circles the entire planet, as do the clicks and pops of phytoplankton and the swish and clack of tides. Such infinite abundance – no stinginess at all – we bow in gratitude.

Notes:
1) The Practice of Perfection – The Paramitas from a Zen Buddhist Perspective, Robert Aitken, pub. Pantheon Books, 1994
2) Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Nature”. Emerson, Nature (and) Henry David Thoreau, Walking, pub. Boston: Beacon Press, 1991, p. 11)
3) A Book of Noises – Notes on the Auraculus, Caspar Henderson, publ. University of Chicago Press, pub. 2023 4) Treasury of the True Dharma Eye – Zen Master Dogen’s Shobo Genzo, edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi, pub. Shambhala, 2012, pps 472-477.
5) ibid. Shobo Genzo
6) ibid – The Practice of Perfection, Robert Aitken

Written by Gillian Coote, roshi for the October/November 2024 Newsletter