Bill Murray in the movie “Broken Flowers” (2005) plays a lonely character who receives word that he has a son through one of his past lovers. He looks for him but never finds him. In the end (spoiler for this 20 year old film) he is sitting and enjoying company with a young man he doesn’t know. He realizes that this young man could be, or might as well be, his son. The young man asks for advice and Murray says “Well, the past is gone, I know that. The future, isn’t here yet, whatever it’s going to be. So, all there is, is, is this. The present.” The young man asks if Murray is Buddhist, and Murray says “No.”

It is like this with the truth. The Buddha does not claim the truths he taught. He said he found an old path to enlightenment, and just cleared the way for others to follow it more easily. But the task is not done. We must investigate the here and now (Dhamma), and try to communicate it with each other. We must use the common words we know, rewrite them, redefine them, until the path the Buddha took is clear again. The old words the Buddha offered don’t have the same effect; words change and move. Words are impermanent. Also, the reality we face is different now, less stable (I would venture to say). The days when the Earth could withstand all our hatred and pain are nearly over.

Unfortunately, some Buddhists mistake the teaching they find in the holy books to be the teaching of the Buddha, and worse, they believe this is Buddha’s teaching, while that is not Buddha’s teaching. The Buddha gave us work to do, the most important work: liberating our minds, our purest mind, from this world-moment-already-enveloped-in-flame. The desire to shock us awake and begin working again is desperately portrayed in the call of a Zen Master:

“Zen Master Seung Sahn says that in this life we must all kill three things: First we must kill our parents. Second, we must kill the Buddha.” https://kwanumzen.org/teaching-library/1997/10/01/kill-the-buddha

The Dhamma is not the Word. Aj. Sumedho has a famous teaching “It is like this.” We don’t understand it with words and descriptions. We use “it is like this” because it is so unhelpful, so useless, that we are compelled to deal with reality as it is directly sensed. This moment I am writing is not the same moment you are reading this. but a poet can capture more depth in this moment, with a simplicity that is vastly improved from the minute steps of mathematics. A poetic text invites a sense of touch, a euphoria of touching and sharing the texture of words. one can understand a poem better with “Our poem is like this.” because by the time these leaves of thought are revisited by a future reader, “this” is no more. But Buddhism was about “this.” Now “this” has changed. My words have moved off-target. The mark has moved too. Everything is impermanent. Missing the mark is all we ever do. Our poem can share in this melancholy of the failure of words. Our poem begs to be excused and at the same time it is our most widely intimate shared moment.

I want to dedicate this message to Buddha, Dhamma (the teaching), and Sangha (the community of monks and followers).