Survival

Ms Ché and I are well into our seventies. Neither of us really thought we'd be around this long, especially given our wild youth. But her mother lived to be 89, and she would have lived longer if she'd been diagnosed and treated correctly for a couple of serious ailments that somehow the doctors missed -- over and over. Makes you wonder, I guess... Her father died when he was 84, I believe, in a board and care home where he was not well looked-after, but that's how that goes, isn't it? There are so many horror stories of what happens to the elderly in our society. I think he was an early victim of the System. Nevertheless, after his stroke, he held on for quite a while despite the deplorable conditions of the care home. 

I'm now and then in cahoots with the Winter Practice sangha, a Buddhist practice community of several hundred participants around the world who come together mostly online to share experience and insight and just be together for a period of sitting and study. Many -- most by far -- of the participants are elderly women, some of whom are not in the best of health, some bed-bound, a few alone. Maybe more than a few. And my heart goes out to them. They know how easy it is for things to fall to pieces when your health gives out and you're by yourself and you can't take care of any more than the simplest of things. You know how easy it is for small failings to pile up and multiply like locusts and to bury you in their debris. This is how most of the elderly single women on the "Hoarders" TV program wind up in that condition. Their health goes haywire and they can't physically or sometimes mentally take care of their residence anymore. The debris of living piles up and they can't get rid of it. They don't have the kind of help they need -- and sometimes they reject it if offered -- and eventually they give up trying. There's no point, right?

No point. Well, no, there is "no point," but that doesn't mean that your life or mine has no meaning, usefulness, or direction. You may take a Bodhisattva Vow and your life becomes dedicated to service.That can take many forms whether publicly and prominently or on a modest personal level. Many of the elders in the sangha have lived a Bodhisattva life but now near the end of it, they are set adrift. So many things that they want to do and feel they need to do both for themselves and for others they can't do without help or at all, and they're left feeling they've failed. A feeling that compounds. So the sangha serves to relieve some of that feeling, for in community, we're not alone. 

But still, it must be tough for those who can't get around very well, or in some cases at all. Doing takes mobility. Other problems include chronic pain. Our practice and training says "Lean into the pain." Welcome it, even learn to enjoy it., Well, maybe that's too strong a term, but the upshot is to use the power of your mind to overcome the pain or at least to control it. This works for some people, not for everyone. Pain manifests differently in different people and it may be controlled or overcome by different means depending on the individual. I've had to deal with so much pain over the years. "Making it go away" by mind power alone doesn't work for me, but it may work for others. Certainly worth giving it a try.

What surprises both Ms Ché and me about still being around at our now-advanced age is that we don't feel "old" -- except when physical limitations intervene, and we can't do what we used to or think we should be able to. Physically our age has begun to catch up with us. There are times when we just can't "do." And it's frustrating. 

For me of course, I was caught unaware by the growing infection in my spine, and I was initially undiagnosed and misdiagnosed when I sought medical care. So the infection had at least another month to develop. 

For a time in the hospital, I couldn't sit up, stand or walk. Pain was so great I was in agony. I lost control of my bowels and bladder. I was a wreck. Useless, right? Well, no. For half the time I was hospitalized, I had a roommate whose condition was considerably worse than mine. He'd had surgery for a blown-out knee, and something had clearly not gone right. He was in extreme pain, could not stand or walk, and not even morphine made his condition tolerable. I had my own problems, but I offered what I could -- mainly friendly listening and modest advice -- to help him feel a little better. Encourage him not to give up. Give him some psychological tools to cope with the pain if not overcome it. And so on. I don't feel I did much, but he sure thought so.

Ms Ché visited every day and she did what she could, too. Between us, we were tag-teaming help for Mike, letting him know we were there and cared and would help.

Bodhisattvas? Sure, why not? It was little enough, but it was something. When called, we don't say no.

I'm so glad to be home, but since I've been home, it's been quite a struggle. A month of physical therapy got me up off my back and moving, but once I finished the 12 week antibiotic treatment pain returned, initially just like the pain I felt prior to being correctly diagnosed and hospitalized. Sometimes the pain has been severe. I need to adjust my meds, but from experimenting, I've been able to mostly control the pain, but the downside is I have very limited mobility because of the numbness in my left leg and foot. As Ms Ché pointed out yesterday, "You can barely get around in the house; you're not going out on your own." I was planning on going to the grocery store to save her a trip, and she said "no." And she went on her own so cheerfully!

We've come this far. There's no telling when our time will be up, and it's really not an issue. We carry on. 

Survival is a strange thing. That we're still around is allowing us time for more service. As little as it might be.

Coming to Service

 "Service" means different things to different people at different times. We may not know it, but we are all obliged to serve in some way throughout our lives, sometimes willingly, often not. The "Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi" is one many Buddhist teachings that prepare and enable the service expected of Chan/Zen Dharma participants -- whether priests, monks or laypeople.

As I say, I absorbed the teaching about 50 years ago in San Francisco. It was part of a range of Buddhist texts I had accumulated over the previous 10 years or so of practice. I can't say I know where it came from. I don't. And I can't say I was a particular scholar of Zen or Buddhism at the time -- nor am I particularly so now. Buddhist scholarship and commentary is quite a specialty these days, there is massive amounts of it produced over the last 2,500 years, much of it recently. I'm not sure that much of it has helped me more than the teachings and texts themselves, but because it is produced in such prodigious quantity, it must be helping someone.

Perhaps the primary Buddhist teaching text I absorbed back then was "Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind" by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (156 pg pdf), which presented Zen and Buddhism in such a gentle, kind, simple and straightforward way that it seemed "easily" graspable despite the complexity and often opaqueness of most of the commentary. 

"The Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi" is not commentary. It consists of admonitions, memory-joggers, reminders, and guideposts originally primarily intended for recipients of Dharma Transmission. In other words, it's not really a text for the lay practitioners not receiving Dharma Transmission, yet it has become a routine chant repeated by all at Zen Centers throughout the world (maybe not so much in Japan, though?) and I question the merit of that, simply because the references within it are pretty much opaque without the background training, study and practice that the song is "about."

In other words, if one simply chants it without the background for comprehension, what merit is there?

I've heard tell that even if you don't understand all the many references within it, that's fine. By repeating it in chant, you are automatically building up merit and understanding... "absorbing it" as it were. Much, perhaps, as I did decades ago. I did not, never have, and probably never will chant it, but by absorption, it became part of me and over time has strongly influenced the course of my life.

Go figure. That seems to be the point of chanting it, too.

When you become "awakened" in the Buddhist sense -- that is able to recognize and (sort of) experience the vastness of the Emptiness within which our material existence arises and returns -- the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, even without knowledge of all the many references it contains, becomes crystal clear. No mystery or struggle to it at all. Like so much else, it is self-evident. Suchness (which I doubt I'll get into in this post, but we'll see.)

"Awakening" in the Mahayana Buddhist sense compels service. Which is the point, you might say, of the Jewel Mirror, Dharma Transmission, and of living. 

One has a role to play and a job to do. An overriding purpose. From which there is no escape so long as your being is contained in your body. And even then.... 

I mentioned in one of the seminars during the practice period that I had absorbed the Jewel Mirror Samadhi many years ago and it was part of the process of transforming my life from one of intense selfishness (ie: survival selfishness) to one of constant service. It was, I believe, automatic. There was no conscious determination to come to service. It's just what happened. 

"Service" takes many, many forms. Bodhicitta is a way of referring to the Awakening that leads to service as a Bodhisattva -- someone on the way to Buddhahood who stays in the material world to serve others and their Awakening. There is no end of what you may do in service to others, and one of the keys I learned about through trial and error really more than anything else, is to wait and listen and be available when asked. Don't force yourself in service to others. The opportunities arise spontaneously. 

It helps immeasurably to recognize that as a material being you are imperfect as can be, and you will make many, many mistakes and missteps, and you will fail again and again. And yet... And yet... 

You must carry on. 

The Jewel Mirror Samadhi says that once you have received the Dharma (the Teachings as well as the recognition of Suchness) you are to "keep it well," and you are to serve. Quietly. Not ostentatiously or forcefully but modestly and openly. As a "fool with no voice" as one translation has it. Just this. 

So as I'm coming on to a year of participation among the sangha-beings of this Zen Center, many questions I might have had were I pursuing intellectual knowledge or a monastic future have been more than adequately answered. I didn't have those questions, but oh well!😉

In fact, once on the Bodhisattva path, questions mostly cease except to the extent they get asked as part of service to others. 

I don't claim to be a Bodhisattva -- far from it -- but I see no end to the service I am compelled to provide, both materially and to some extent spiritually. 

And I've come to recognize all this is related to karma and karmic debt. "All my ancient twisted karma..." indeed. 

So much struggle. So deep. So wide. 

🙏