Mushin's father is dying. Valerie's mother passed last week.
Who knows where they go?
It's almost as if the customers are here to teach me something about myself. Last week there was a spate of young women with cancer, and nearly as many wearing saint's medals. In the midst of a lot of self-centered thinking, I was forced to really be grateful for my life.
Today, it seemed like every woman in the store was pregnant. Most seemed gloriously full: they had huge bellies, and a certain settled, cuddly feeling. Spring is certainly here; everything is bursting forth; and there are human babies incubating, biding their time.
Who knows where they come from? And being born, where their lives will lead? Something will hurt them; something will heal them; something will delude and deceive them. They will find a path through the hours and days, and they will grow old if they don't die young. From something, something else will arise: that's how it goes here in the realm of birth and death.
The third woman—she's very young, maybe 19— is a former employee who quit the store in a huff. But recently she's come by to see if we're hiring. And today I found out why she wants so badly to work.
She has a tiny little ring on her finger, and a diffident and vaguely-submissive boy by her side. But she's so small. And so young. Going for the ultrasound today; she doesn't know how far along she is.
That could have been me. Through karma, I am here and she is there: we stood by the shoes, looking at one another.
She has no idea what she's getting into. But then—none of us do. We do our thing and find our way and are driven by karma we barely comprehend. At the end, we die, and our death reflects the manner in which we've lived. The last thing we do bears all the marks of the habits we've cultivated, and of the life we've lived.
I am really seeing that mental habits and reactions have created this self. That the experience of being "me" in this moment.. and this one, is the product of years upon years of worldviews, reactions and responses.
I have become exactly what I created; I have arrived exactly where I was headed all along. How could it be any other way? And knowing that, where do I want to go? What do I want to become? What will I be when it is time to die?
I don't know what to say. I can look at this or I can hide.
Dharma teacher John King, the SF Zen Center teacher mentioned here in an earlier post—teaching still as he dies of throat cancer—recently celebrated a living wake with sangha members in San Francisco. My dear friend Kichu Jika, Michael Donnoe, has posted photos on his Flickr site:
May we all travel well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment