Bodhidharma was a hundred years old when he made the sea voyage from India to China. The winds opposed him. The dharma he taught concerned the importance your true nature. Not falling for illusion or ideas, but systematically and exhaustively investigating the self as it truly is. To make this point, Bodhidharma sat in a cave meditating for nine years, and accepted as his first disciple an experienced meditator who was nevertheless willing to sacrifice his own arm for the key to freedom.
For a long time I thought that freedom, in the spiritual sense, meant that one had cultivated the mind so extensively that one no longer needed to calculate what effect an action might have. The advanced teachers I’d met, and myself on a good day at the monastery, moved and acted with a unselfconscious ease, like flowing water. It seemed they did not know what they were doing until they did it. Their answers were always profound, and they met all of life with a light touch.
One day, fresh out of sesshin, with an expansive mind and a ready tongue, holding forethought to be anathema and impulsiveness a virtue, I found the limits of this easy-flowing freedom. A friend and I were perhaps too intoxicated with our own cleverness, and one another’s cleverness, and we carried on a conversation that caused harm to others. There was trouble--not a lot, but more than enough.
Working my way out of that steaming pile o’ karma, I was confronted by the question of how a person acting from a free and unencumbered place can possibly do harm. I hadn’t been harboring any explicit malice in my heart; but I had been a jerk anyway . And others had been hurt by my actions. The answer seemed to be something like the resolution of the koan of Baizhang’s Fox: an Enlightened Being is aware of cause and effect. (The link is worth a click.) No matter how high you might be flying, ignoring the consequences of volitional actions turns you into a low, slinking creature--the fox of Japanese folklore--bound to inquire endlessly into just how this outcome came to be.
Three weeks ago today, I met an old friend for sushi at a restaurant in my neighborhood. Bun and I had gone to high school together, and although we weren’t close, we had all the same friends in common. I last saw him a few years ago at one of those friends’ weddings, and I don’t have any memory of him, really. Except that we later went for a walk on the beach in San Diego, and had a good chat together.
When I look now at the group photo from the wedding reception, I see that Bun’s gaze is direct and true. Now, I recognize it, but at the time what stuck in my mind was the incredible abundance of delicious food at the reception.
After about five minutes at the sushi restaurant, Bun had invited me to go with him to the country of his birth, which he left as a tiny child. I accepted instantly--perhaps heedlessly, who knows?-- and came home that night smitten.
I have come to enjoy being single, finally, after so many cycles of heartbreak and disillusion--many purely imaginary, but some all too real.
(Like so many with a taste for dharma, I see disillusion as a good thing: incorrect ideas drop away, fantasies are punctured, the harsh medicine of reality releases the bondage of grasping. But it’s been hard. It hurts. It’s supposed to hurt. In fact, what hurts, hurts because it is delusional.)
But here was Bun, eminently qualified in every external way to be the man for me. And truly a man: grounded; knowing himself in an important way; having found some understanding, in spite of never having sat with Bodhidharma. This deeply noble and generous person was lit up from the inside. I was lit up from the inside, too! After our next outing, he held my hand and told me how much I meant to him. The next time, he kissed me and told me he loved me. Since then, we haven’t spent much time apart.
In my diary I wrote, “I didn’t think people like Bun existed anymore.” If I had known... what learning experiences I would have missed--or perhaps become have become embroiled in anyway. But so it is. This.
Normally, I am the outgoing and impulsive one. I find myself in a Zen monastery. I find myself not in a Zen monastery. Then, I find myself in Portland, working hard. I am keeping commitments, making some money, taking a job for next year that will require my effort and skill five days a week. Some maturation may be happening. By contrast: Bun, who has worked for the same technology company for nine years, patiently and earnestly doing some good inside the bowels of the behemoth. Not particularly interested in dating--certainly not in dating just for its own sake. But he knew, when he met me. And he acted.
I look at the “no heedlessness” sign. I have known this person for twenty years, and although I never really saw him until last month, an understanding and a trust arises from that history together. I look carefully at the outcome I am headed for: buying a place together, getting married, and the valuation is positive. Beneficial. As though there is some inkling of a deep spiritual bond already present, which is being reenacted in the surface world in a manner that is at once natural, inexorable and full of delight.
Having sat it silence, it is time to move, to take up the heart’s desire and step into the future. To pay attention to the pull of karma. Not heedless, but engaged.
1 comment:
:-D
Be happy.
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