Berkeley Buddhist Priory
1358 Marin Avenue, Albany, CA 94706
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Rev. Kinrei Bassis, Prior

Nine Beautiful Words
(With Apologies to Webster's)

by Amanda Snedaker

I asked for a dictionary for my high school graduation present. I expected to need it in college. And I did: the top of the binding is stretched where I've pulled it, over and over again, from a tightly packed shelf, many of the letters have worn off the tabs, and the pages are marked with stray bits of highlighter and ballpoint pen. But I've used it far more since I began to meditate than I have in the previous twenty-plus years. We are searching for that which cannot be described in words, and yet the process of doing so leads me deeper and deeper into exactly what words mean. I sing, "Homage to . . ." a thousand times before I think, what exactly am I offering to the Buddhas, the Bodhisattvas, the Scripture of Great Wisdom? And I pull down the dictionary to see, and to think, and more and more often, to reflect, allowing the skill of the lexicographer (yes! I looked it up) to deepen my understanding. {homage: '(h)am-ij, n, reverential regard, deference; syn, see honor}1 . Yes.

This poem by Tsung Tsai caught my attention the first time I read it:
Buddha says, "Come, come. I will teach you everything".2


It continues to hold my attention so that now I consider this combination of nine simple words to be one of the most beautiful in the language. And I've brought Webster's, and, I hope, some reflection, to bear on why I find these few words to be so meaningful.

Buddha says, "Come, come.

We use this word, 'Buddha', as convenient shorthand. Sometimes we mean the historical Buddha, our original teacher, the source of the Four Noble Truths and of the Noble Eightfold Path that leads to the cessation of suffering. And we use 'Buddha' to mean the Eternal, the Buddha Nature, That Which Is, the Unborn. Shakyamuni Buddha offers us the path to understanding the Buddha Nature and of living in accord with It. This dual meaning adds richness to these few words; both the Buddha of this world and our own Buddha Nature, the still small voice within each of us, is talking to us. In a way, He's speaking to Himself.

This Buddha is active, and He's ready for us to respond. He invites us, but does not insist. He beckons us to approach, to move toward Him. This 'come' is the twin to the 'come' we sing in the Litany of the Great Compassionate One: "Come, come, hear, hear". And if we do approach, if we do accept the invitation, the Buddha Nature within us moves in response: "a joy springs up in me". He doesn't say please, but yet we are welcome. {come: to move toward something, approach . . . to move toward or enter a scene of action or into a field of interest, used with an implication of purpose}3 Purpose! {'per pes: intention}4 Again, yes. And then He repeats the invitation: He means it.

I will teach you

One-to-one, no separation, no filter, this is big time 'face time', coupled with a promise, a commitment. {will: 'wil: used to express inevitability}.5 I can have it for my own if I am willing {'wil-ing: inclined or favorably disposed in mind: ready; done, borne, or accepted of choice; syn, see voluntary}6 to learn it.

During a recent sanzen, the monk prefaced his answer to my question with a comment about not being able to do it for me, that it was up to me to do the work of training. At the time, I mentally dismissed this comment as sanzen boilerplate, and simply waited for the answer to my question, which came forthwith. However, just a few days later, a friend made a very similar comment. I was startled, and had to look carefully to see what was I was missing: I didn't think that I was expecting anyone to do the work for me. So I made a little inquiry into the difference between the words, help me and teach me. Teach scares me: I might make a mistake that needs correcting, and that might hurt. But help sounds gentle and kind, someone right beside me. Sometimes help is appropriate, but not always; no one can change me but me.

A quick visit to that dictionary bore this out. Help . . implies the need of aid, the inability to do it alone. It suggests a weakness or lack in the one helped, and a strength that can be borrowed from the one aiding.7 And teach: {'tech: to cause to know a subject; to cause to know how; to accustom to some action or attitude}.8 Different, indeed! Really, what I wanted to know was how to deal with the issue I was presenting, and certainly the answer came in terms of accustoming myself to new action and attitude toward it. No weakness to undermine my effort; no strength to be found outside myself.

Upon reflection, I realized that I have been told before that it is my job to do it, not another's. But I was not able-not willing-to hear it. And not clear, until I got into it with the dictionary, that my effort to avoid suffering (mistakes and the resulting correction) was really leading me to avoid responsibility and was undermining my training.

To teach implies the object, that there is someone who is learning: {'lern: to gain knowledge or understanding of or skill in by study, instruction, or experience, to come to be able to, to come to realize, to find out: ascertain; syn, see discover}.9 Learn, discover, ascertain: all active words, requiring an act-or: I will teach you.

One of my ongoing lessons in training is realizing that I should know the things I learn in meditation and training. This is a prime example: I have been treating "learning" as passive, when in fact, I know from my own experience that it is active. Some people learn visually, some orally, some by experience. The best word that describes my learning process is repetition: I must see, hear, think about, write something many times before it is "mine". It can be distressing to realize that I often think I'm more willing than I actually am. Here's another layer to repetition and willingness: I must bring myself back, time and again, to the active work of meditation and mindfulness, of really making the teaching of the Buddha 'mine'.

Many times I have sat in Dharma talks and selected out phrases, sentences, stories that seemed to be for me. We've all smiled and nodded at things the monk said that were particular to our situation. It's a part of that learn by repetition stuff. But the words I'm picking are not for a particular person, my 'self', but for a point in time: if I can hear it all without discrimination, I will get further, I will have a store of wisdom that is broader, more general, more useful than the words that apply to my particular now. And I will have taken another chip out of the block of self that says, over and over, I-I-I, me-me-me. The 'you' of this poem is not particular to 'me'. The Buddha is speaking to all 'yous', to all of us, to all beings. It is individualÑeach of us must go aloneÑbut not special or particular, not in any way separate.

everything {Everything: 'ev-re-thing: all that exists; all that relates to the subject; a most important or excellent thing}10 Nothing will be withheld, nothing omitted, nothing hidden; all, complete, entire, whole, full. Buddha says, I will teach you- Me.

Nine beautiful, beautiful words.

1 Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Company, 1969, p.397. All definitions have been freely edited by the author, and any errors are hers alone.
2 Crane, George, Bones of the Master: A Buddhist Monk's Search for the Lost Heart of China, New York, NY: Bantam Books, 2000, p. 255.
3 Op cit, p. 165.
4 Ibid., p. 694.
5 Ibid., p. 1021.
6 Ibid., p. 1022.
7 Ibid., p. 387.
8 Ibid., p. 904.
9 Ibid., p. 480.
10 Ibid., p. 288.