That's pretty much how this practice period has been going. I keep circling around, not to start over so much as remember the shreds and tatters of the Dharma I lost along the way, go back and pick up some of and then some more of what I left behind, not to have it as in possession but to recall and incorporate it into my present being.
Sitting Zen opens the doorway you might say, and my sits are just to sit. Doorways open or they don't but when a doorway is opened, there's no need for a longer sit at that time. That's why they vary in length, up to an hour but usually much shorter. And more frequent than the zazen schedule at the zendo. Chopping wood and carrying water is practice just as sitting is. "Chopping wood and carrying water" is a metaphor for daily activities, doing what needs to be done, while practicing Zen; in fact, the activity itself becomes practice. Eventually, your life and being, my life and being, is practice.
Years ago, I was there, or as nearly there as I think I was able to get. I'd absorbed as much of the sutras and the Dharma and the Buddha nature of all beings and non-beings as I was going to at the time, and in my sits I had entered The Void, where there was nothing, no thoughts, images, plans, desires, distractions, or delusions. Just pure emptiness.
If I had had a teacher at the time, I have little doubt that I would have been told that "The Void" I encountered was a delusion. Quite likely dangerous. And I should let go of it. In fact, I may have encountered that idea in my studies without a teacher. At any rate, whenever I sat in those days, I would immediately go to Void state, whether or not it was a delusion, and from my perspective, it wouldn't let go of me.
This happened toward the end of my year or so residence in San Francisco. I'm not well-adapted to living in cities at all, and at the time (mid-late '70s) San Francisco had a distinctly odd vibe. There was all this alternative New Age pseudo spirituality going on, and there were hustlers everywhere of every kind imaginable. It was a cacophony of yada yada all the time. The Counterculture had mostly imploded, but its echoes lingered and San Francisco was still the heart-center of what could be, what ought to be. The City was filthy, deteriorating and unhealthy, however. Not at all the image it liked to project. That perception may have been a factor of where I was living, too, on the border between the Tenderloin and Nob Hill, a territory filled with dregs and aspirations and desires. I tried to keep my path narrow, but I couldn't keep it narrow enough, and in the end, it was simply more than I could bear with any kind of equanimity to be there.
Compound that with this Void I had entered when sitting which I carried within me beyond sitting. In fact, out on the street or going about my daily work, the insight the Void had given me -- about Oneness and Emptiness among other things -- stayed with me, increasing as the days and nights wore on. I Knew. But rather than giving me comfort and equanimity, it scared me. There is this concept in Buddhism that once you enter this Void, you have achieved Enlightenment, but I was not convinced that's what had occurred at all. If this was my Awakened State, how... fraughtful it was. I felt I was liberated, but liberated to do what, be what, know what? In the Void, it didn't matter. The question was self answering and endlessly repeating and not there at all.
Well, the immediate task was to move out of San Francisco, back to the Valley for a time, and then commence to wander ("bhikkhu wandering") for years afterwards. I stopped regular sits, sitting Zen only occasionally, intermittently, so as not to be in this Void all the time. I knew it was there -- within me -- and could be recovered at any time, but I was not inclined to be there without understanding. Instead, I brushed the edges now and then as if to have a reminder. Of what?
Truly. What? I didn't know. And yet I did.
I had long before awakened to bodhicitta, compassion (it's more than that), but I was deeply unsure how to apply it. I felt I lacked wisdom, and I did. That was part of what was holding me back from accepting the Void -- if it wasn't a delusion -- and from acting in the material world as a Bodhisattva would. Not that I didn't have compassion for all, I had too little guidance on how to use it. What to do with it. How to "regulate" it if you will. And yet from time to time, there was no holding back from it.
So as a wandering bhikkhu, I tested and experimented in all kinds of places all over the country and I made all kinds of discoveries and mistakes, and I learned and didn't learn. This went on and on, and ultimately leading to a crisis point where I wasn't learning, my ego was inflated, I wasn't serving, instead I was turning on the very beings that had been the focus of my compassion. And I stopped --stopped wandering too -- and just sat in a kind of primordial despair until my bodhicitta called me back to serve just one being in distress, suffering, and I did that for close to two years, which was practice again, and shortly after that practice, I started another cycle of wandering in a different realm from which I learned some traces of wisdom, but not enough. I ended that cycle with a heavy sigh, but there was nothing more I felt I could do in that context and I was running the risk of turning on the very beings I was attempting to serve again, turning on them out frustration. Not so much frustration at them as frustration of my own tendencies to erect barriers or refuse to open the door rather than banging my head against it.
So it was back to basics and start again. This time on a much slower and more deliberate path (I thought), one step at a time. Setting aside many of my bad habits and destructive traits. Recognizing them but not employing them. For example, anger at individuals. Facing unknown rigors of physical pain, constant reminders of not just how fragile I was, but how everyone was fragile and faced suffering often without any help and in much greater pain and distress than I was.
A Buddhist will say, "If you're feeling pain, be grateful. It means you're alive."
OK...
But I had plenty of help. What a wonder! While I was often in an agony of physical pain and psychic overload, there were always those willing and able to help, to comfort. Bodhisattvas all, even if they didn't know it. Life itself was giving me examples to follow if only I had the sense to do it. Well, sense would have to wait.
And then came physical relief. When I started infusion therapy, within a couple of weeks the pain was almost entirely gone, and by the end of the first month after infusion I felt no pain at all. Every now and then a twinge perhaps, a reminder. But nothing at all to complain about. Miracle? Well, as close to it as I could imagine.
Bodhisattvas appeared out of nowhere to help lift me up from whatever hell I'd been through. My gratitude was often unexpressed or not expressed very well, but I felt it constantly. I would not be here to write about this phase or any phase of my life without a myriad of Bodhisattvas. each supplying just what I needed right then.
So to them all I make a deep bow of gratitude.
And ask their forgiveness for my own failings.
Most of these Bodhisattvas came and went. I guess it's not their job to stick around once their task is done. After all, their task is to help all sentient beings reach Awakening on the way to Buddhahood. A daunting task indeed, but one on which they cannot tarry.
And some have expanded the notion of "sentient beings" to include the globe in its entirety, the Gaia, Earth as a whole; a living, sentient, being herself and home to all the other terrestrial beings. And if there are more Out There in space, I'm sure they too will have their Bodhisattvas.
My task is to get right with -- or give up -- the path I started on so long ago. One of my teachers pointed out that we're not here all that long to begin with and as we age, our time gets shorter and shorter until it's gone. What are we to do with those few years or days or minutes we have?
What path to take?
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