Fundamentals

I beg to urge you, everyone:
life-and-death is a grave matter,
all things pass quickly away;
each of us must be completely alert:
never neglectful, never indulgent.

This is the evening message of sesshin (the Zen retreat), called out by a senior member of the assembly just before lights-out. It expresses three concerns of the Zen student: first, being alive is an important responsibility; second, we have little time to fulfill that responsibility; and third, rigorous practice is necessary for fulfillment.

Our model is Shakyamuni Buddha. Known as the founder of Buddhism, he lived in India more than 2,500 years ago — but religion is fundamentally not a matter of history. I recall a course in Buddhism given by Dr. D.T. Suzuki at the University of Hawaii a long time ago. He began the course by telling the story of Shakyamuni. He did not tell it as history or biography, but as the story of Everyone — the story of you and me.

The Buddha was born a prince and it was predicted that he would become either a great religious leader or a great emperor. His father, the king, preferred to see his boy become a great emperor, so he had him trained in the arts of the warrior and the statesman. He also provided the comforts and entertainment appropriate to the station of a young prince — fine food and clothing, and the rest of it.

This is your story and mine. When we are young, we are all little princes and princesses. We are each of us the center of the universe. In fact, our mouths are the center, and everything enters therein. We are guided by our parents toward a sense of responsibility, but despite the program set up about us, we emerge, each in our own way, as individual inquirers.

The Buddha's program of power and ease palled for him before he was thirty. It is said that despite his father's efforts to protect him from the realities of suffering, he was witness to sickness, old age, and death. Once, he glimpsed the figure of a monk in the palace compound and asked about him. Pondering deeply, he questioned his purpose in the world. Finally he left his little family in care of his father to seek his spiritual fortune in the forest.

You can imagine the difficulty of this decision. Everything that anyone might hold dear, a beautiful spouse, a baby child, a career as a beneficent ruler — all given up in a search that could well lead nowhere. His decision was rooted in profound concern for all beings. Why should there be suffering in the world? Why should there be the weakness of old age? Why should there be death? And what in the life of a monk might resolve such doubts? These questions plagued the young Gautama. He recognized