Threading the Needle
Dharma talk
Peg Syverson
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Anne Lamott wrote:
You start wherever you can. You see a great need, so you thread a needle, you tie a knot in your thread. You find one place in the cloth through which to take one stitch, one simple stitch, nothing fancy, just one that’s strong and true.
Many years ago I shared a favorite poem with my Writing Center staff. I didn’t think much about it after that, I’ve shared many poems with them. But when I retired, they surprised me with a gorgeous Japanese calligraphy of the poem translated into Japanese by a calligrapher here in Austin, and it is displayed in the Zendo now. And they had made a poster-sized copy of the poem to hang in the reception area of the new Writing Center facility in the Perry-Casteñeda library at UT.
Calligraphy by Kaori Kitta
This week this poem has shown up twice, once in Kim’s daily art piece, and again when it was read at the beginning of the Madison integrated intensive by Suzanne Kilkus. Many of you know this poem well but for those who are not familiar with it, I’ll read it for you, and send it out via email. The poet. William Stafford, has long been a favorite of mine since back in my years studying poetry in the Writers Workshop at University of Iowa. I still have a battered copy of The Rescued Year, a collection of his poems published in 1966. Here’s the poem:
The Way It Is
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
Something about this poem touches people, and I want to talk about it today in connection with our Zen practice. There are some obvious connections, the way we somehow pick up the thread of Buddhist practice and keep going, even when it mystifies our friends and relatives. It probably even mystifies ourselves at times. And it takes us through all the various ups and downs of a human life, even though we can’t say exactly how and why this practice is so necessary. A thread, really, is so slight, so insignificant. A breath, a bit of stillness and silence.
I want to take this analogy a little bit further today, and I want to connect it with our present day situation and everyday practice. I first want to point out that our thread may be meandering rather aimlessly, or without a clear direction, rather loose and even confused or tangled. We may find ourselves in a knot, or struggling to find meaning and purpose. Finding Zen practice is like picking up a needle and passing the thread of our lives right through the eye. Now we have a form, a structure for making that thread useful. It doesn’t change the thread; it gives a direction, a trajectory, and a purpose, whether we are mending a torn shirt, sewing on a button, or creating a fabulous fashion statement. The needle carries the thread through all kinds of situations: denim, silk, wool, cotton. It can make masks for a pandemic, curtains for a bedroom, or Buddha’s robe.
Is it ordinary, or is it holy? Reb asked. Our thread—how are we sewing our lives?
When we sew a rakusu, this representation of Buddha’s robe, we take up the needle and thread and begin, stitch by stitch, to piece together a way to wear Buddha’s teachings as our own heart and mind. Breath by breath, stitch by stitch, we are not only sewing to hold bits of fabric into their proper shape, we are embodying a practice that is directly connected 2500 years back to the Buddha himself.
The stitches are practical, but also visible on the face of the rakusu, an image representing countless moments and states of mind. What is this thread that connects us throughout time and space to the Buddha himself?
It is the warm hand to warm hand transmission of the Dharma, the teachings, through our Zen ancestors, men and women who faithfully, breath by breath, practiced with sincerity and wholehearted care. What they discovered, they transmitted, until it could be conveyed to us, through the warm hands of our own teachers, and we, in turn, convey it for others, not through exalted states of consciousness, not through lofty pronouncements or sermons, but through our everyday acts of kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity, breath by breath, stitch by stitch.
In the Buddha’s time, the disciples would go to the charnel grounds and find scraps of discarded cloth from bodies, bleach them, dye them, piece the scraps together and make their robes from them. There was nothing about these robes that made a fashion statement, that someone could envy or covet. Nothing special.
The needle of Zen practice carries the thread of Buddha’s teachings through all of us in every interaction, in every moment of mindful, energetic care. Making a single stitch is a tiny act, almost insignificant on its own. Keep going and you sew a line, a vast robe of liberation, a formless field of benefaction. Follow the needle, a reliable guide for the thread and a way to pierce the fabric of our own conditioning, to make it useful, to make a life of dignity and worth from the scraps of fabric we are given.
We can make a life of spiritual harmony with all being, a life of generosity, morality, patience, vigor, contemplation, and wisdom from any piece of cloth in our own lives, any circumstance and situation. We take up the needle and thread it. And in doing this, we carry forward the teachings and practice of our Zen ancestors for the next generation, so that they will not feel abandoned and bereft in the midst of lives that look like a meaningless jumble of thread.
In the lineage of Buddhist ancestors, which we are chanting at 6:00 AM on weekday mornings, you should know these first six names that come right before Shakamuni Butsu Daiosho:
Bibashi Butsu Daiosho
Shiki Butsu Daiosho
Bishafu Butsu Daiosho
Kurosōn Butsu Daiosho
Kunagōnmuni Butsu Daiosho
Kashō Butsu Daiosho
They are the Buddhas that came before Shakyamuni Buddha, the Buddhas of past aeons. Butsu means “Buddha,” and it therefore is an office, a position, not a person. You will also hear, in some ceremonies, the name Maitreya Buddha, which is the Buddha yet to come, the Buddha of the future. This leaves a gap, a space for the present moment Buddha, unnamed. That would be you. You are the Buddha of your own life, there is no other. As it says in the Eihei Koso Hotsuganmon:
Buddhas and ancestors of old were as we;
we, in the future shall be buddhas and ancestors.
Revering buddhas and ancestors,
we are one buddha and one ancestor;
awakening bodhi-mind, we are one bodhi-mind.
Our only difficulty is that we do not recognize this. Sometimes we may glimpse it, but then we forget, get distracted, fall into our conditioning. It’s like we put down our needle and lose track of our sewing. That’s ok, just pick it back up and begin again, breath by breath, stitch by stitch. Sati, translated usually as mindfulness, means to recall. Where was I? What was I doing? Take a breath.
The effects of such tiny gestures are cumulative. In the beginning, it feels awkward and strange, and we struggle to manage each one: each stitch, each breath, each zazen period, each intensive. We make mistakes and correct them, or leave them to show. Over time, the stitches become more even, the practice seems to do itself, and a rakusu, a relationship, a life takes its distinctive shape. When it is completed, a robe, a community of practice, a lifetime feels profound, deep, meaningful, and satisfying.
When we are actually sewing Buddha’s robe, we silently say a chant with each stitch:
namu kie butsu
There are different translations of this chant, but my favorite is the one I was taught: Here I plunge my life into Buddha. Stitch by tiny stitch, this is embodied experience, dedicated practice.
We are in difficult times, you don’t need me to tell you that. The ancient Zen koan that I put with Stafford’s poem presents us with a contemporary dilemma.
Why can’t clear-eyed bodhisattvas sever the red thread?
Why can’t we escape into exalted states of consciousness and lose ourselves in the emptiness of sky-like mind? Why doesn’t our practice allow us to float about 3 feet above the dust and noise and terrors of modern life, calm and serene, filled with saintly benevolence for the suffering beings below? Well, am I the only one who started out believing that’s what practice was for?
We pick up the needle and thread it. We call a parent, we wash dishes, we put on a mask, we get frustrated, despairing, terrified, we sit in zazen, again, again, again. We make this red thread useful, we sew a life, a friendship, a marriage, a community, an illness, an aging, a dying.
Yesterday, Laurie organized sangha members who came to Appamada to weed, keeping an appropriate distance. The air was cool and fresh, and they worked hard for two hours. One at a time, tiny weed by tiny weed, they pulled up the myriad weeds in the walkways and gravel. One by one, the path became clear. I was handling household chores, too, one by one, and I felt so connected and heartened by this expression of great care for our sangha.
We have a collective sewing effort, beyond our personal Zen practice, our individual threads. Together we are weaving the heartfelt community we have all longed to belong to, a fabric of kindness, compassion, care and support for whatever we are going through, whatever our lives bring us. It is enacted through efforts, both tiny and mundane, like pulling a weed, and enormous and sweeping, like Robyn Reso’s wonderful bequest, and everything in between.
I can’t tell you how grateful I am for your sincere and wholehearted efforts gathering even from a great distance, the threads that we are all bringing to our sangha, and weaving this larger community, now, in this present moment, when it is most needed. It is so wonderful to see your faces. May our sincere practice and the compassion of our ancestors and their teachings carry us safely through these times together.