by Rojin Genyo (Steve LeFevre)

I want to start with a raft.

The Buddha tells a story. A man is traveling, and he comes to a great expanse of water. This shore is dangerous. The far shore is safe. But there’s no bridge and no boat. So he gathersgrass and twigs and branches and leaves, anything he can find. He binds them together, and with that raft, paddling with his hands and his feet, he makes it across.

Then the Buddha asks a strange question. Now that the man is across, should he lift the raft onto his head and carry it wherever he goes? And of course we want to say no. You set it down. Even the teaching, the Buddha says, is something you let go of.

I’ve heard this story a lot. But lately I’ve been asking a different question about it. Not what do you do with the raft. Something simpler.

What is the raft made of?

Grass. Twigs. Branches. Leaves. Whatever was lying on the bank, whatever he could find. The Buddha doesn’t hand this man a boat. There’s no ferryman, no beautiful carved vessel passed down through the generations. He builds it right there, out of the ordinary stuff on the shore he’s trying to leave.

When I say raft, you might picture something sturdy, lashed tight and sanded smooth. That’s not this raft. This is grass and twigs pulled up in a hurry on a dangerous shore. This is a Hail Mary. If you saw it, you might not want to get on it.

And yet it’s enough to get him across. Not because it’s beautiful, but because it’s what he had.

I don’t know about you, but that’s a raft I recognize. The raft I’m building to get through my life is not a masterpiece. It’s whatever I can grab. It’s held together with improvisation and luck, and a few things people have taught me that I didn’t fully understand at the time, and maybe still don’t. And I suspect I’m not the only one here who’d say that.

Look closely at that raft. It isn’t a smooth log. You can still see every twig. The good ones and the bad ones. The things I’m proud of and the things I’d rather hide. The grief, the mistakes, the days I got it right by accident. None of them had to turn into something else to get me here. They just had to be tied together.

Here’s something else about that raft. It only exists because of the river. If there were no water to cross, he’d never have gathered a single blade of grass. The river decides the shape of the raft. Your suffering and your practice are like that. Something drove you to the water. The raft you built is shaped exactly to the river you’re facing.

Which is worth remembering, because sometimes we look at other people’s rafts.

We look over and think, why is theirs so sturdy? So put together? Did they find better twigs? Is my raft good enough?

Every Sunday, before we do anything else, we ask to be freed from the superiority complex, the inferiority complex, and the equality complex. That’s the measuring mind. We name it at the start because it’s always there. I’m better than you. I’m worse than you. I’m just as good as you. It’s all the same ruler.

But your raft was built for your river. It would sink in mine, and mine would sink in yours. There’s nothing to measure. There’s just the water in front of each of us. I’ll tell you my river. My river is sitting here with you. I want to give you a good dharma talk. A correct one. An accurate one. I feel anxious about it every time, wanting to get it right, wanting the raft to be sturdy and beautiful and worthy of you. And that wanting is the near shore. It’s right here, right now. That’s the grasping. The wish to build a perfect raft is the river I’m trying to cross.

So here’s what I’m going to try to do. I’m going to build this raft as best I can, out of the twigs I’ve got. And then at some point, I’m going to try to stop paddling. And we’ll see what’s holding us up.

In our tradition, there’s another raft-builder. His name is Dharmakara. Before he became Amida Buddha, he spent five eons shaping forty-eight vows. And the one we hold closest is the eighteenth, the Primal Vow. As I understand it, it says this: whoever sincerely entrusts themselves and says the Name, even just ten times, will be born in the Pure Land. That’s it. No test. No minimum standard for the raft. Come as you are.

And even the entrusting isn’t something I have to manufacture. As I understand it, that’s given too.

Now, the student in me wants to ask: if the eighteenth vow is the one that matters, why are there forty-seven others?

And notice, I told you I’d stop paddling, and here I am, still paddling.

But I’ve come to think the forty-eight vows are a raft. The most magnificent raft ever built. Every plank considered, nothing left out. And the whole thing comes to rest on the simplest one. Entrust. Be carried. All that careful building leads to the place where you stop building.

And this is where it can sting a little. I look at Dharmakara’s raft: forty-eight vows, a whole Pure Land, jewels and music and light. Then I look at mine. Grass and twigs.

But he didn’t build that raft to ride it himself. He built it so mine wouldn’t have to be beautiful. And neither would yours. His vow is elaborate so my raft can be a Hail Mary and still get across. My twigs float on his ocean.

So let me try. Let me stop paddling.

Here’s what I notice. I can’t actually make myself let go. The hand that’s been grasping all week can’t decide its way into being open. If letting go were one more thing I could accomplish, it would just be more paddling.

But the raft keeps floating.

It was floating the whole time. Not one of the thoughts I’ve been so anxious to get right was ever only mine. They came from my teachers, from all of you, from causes and conditions I didn’t author and can’t take credit for. As Christopher says, even self-power is other-power. I was being carried before I gathered a single twig. As I understand it, that’s what the Vow is. That’s what’s been holding me up the whole time I thought it was me.

Christopher said something at retreat that really stuck with me. How can you fail at life, when what you’re doing is being human?

So I look at my raft. Grass and sticks. And I don’t feel ashamed of it.

This is my raft. This is my life. The worry, the Hail Marys, the things I only half understood, the people who handed me these pieces along the way. My raft is what it is. And it lets me come as I am.

And I started by asking what the raft is made of.

My raft is I am. And I’m grateful for that. Not just for the good twigs, but for all of them. Because if I’m being honest, the strongest pieces of this raft are the ones I never wanted. The sorrow. The hard years. The things I clung to. The things I ran away from. Without those, I never would have come to the water. I never would have needed a raft. I never would have found the teachings, or found all of you, or found out I was being carried.

So I’m grateful that when I came to the water, there was anything there to gather. That the bank wasn’t bare. I didn’t put those twigs there. They were given.

And here’s the last thing. If I build this raft only to save myself, I’ve missed it. Dharmakara didn’t vow for himself. He vowed for every being. Everyone who handed me a twig already made the crossing, and turned around, and came back for me.

And the twigs I’m most ashamed of, the sorrow, the hard years, those turn out to be the ones that let me reach back. I can sit with your grief because I’ve carried mine. My hardest twigs are how I find you on the bank.

I can’t practice just for me. I practice for you, and you practice for me. That’s how any of us gets across.

And you already know this. We say it together every Sunday. So let’s say it now.

When sorrow invades the mind, we find the Buddha’s teachings.

Thank you, sorrow!

Through cruel adversity, we discover the Sangha and the transformation of suffering.

Thank you, cruel adversity!

When our clinging and aversions overwhelm us, may we discover the great compassion of Amida Buddha.

Thank you, clinging and aversions.

Through the unfolding of the dharma, we place our hands in gassho and bow to the oneness of life.

Namu Amida Butsu.