Blood on the Rocks

  Across the valley the Sangre de Christo Mountains stretch quietly. The Blood of Christ: salvation, in the Spanish mind. For an immigrant me, they also are a refuge, wedged between the fires and smoke-filled skies of the west and the hurricanes and floods of the east. 

 The rocks beside me once flowed molten hot.  After eons their patina became a canvas for Tewa people. Their glyphs remain a mystery. What did they feel as their world wound down? They already had known drought and famine. In the end, did their eyes see demons in metal clothing, those ancestors of the enchanting Spanish accent of Santa Fe? 

 How did the Tewa face the end of their world? Did apocalypse figure in their stories?

 My friends flee fire that incinerates places I know so well. Family returns to a devastated home. Here it is peaceful before my eyes but my heart is rent as deeply as the gorge of the river that has given life to this land from a time even before humans.  It has meandered through the ages and though it will shrink and it will grow, it will not stop flowing.

 And the mountains and rocks of the mother we have treated so shamelessly? Will they remember us, as they do the Tewa who respectfully left their marks upon her? Or will they think of us as but a passing dream?

 Like the ancients, I am compelled to open my heart and inscribe my thought-images upon a canvas, but one much more fleeting than theirs.

Shakyamuni Buddha Teaching the Lotus Sutra

 I've been away from this blog for quite some time now and a lot has happened in our little world since my last post. In an ironic way the global pandemic has both isolated people and connected them. To the extent possible Kayla and I have quarantined ourselves.  This is perhaps desirable for everyone who can do so, but we are in high risk categories, so it is specially important for us to do so.  But the irony is that our connections with others have been magnified by our use of the internet. How astonishing that I can sit in my living room and take live teachings from the Dalai Lama -- on the other side of the planet. 

 The pandemic and quarantine has impacted all of us in our own unique ways.  For Kayla it presented an opportunity to refocus on her painting and she completed a beautiful thangka that had sat unfinished for years: Shakyamuni Buddha Teaching the Lotus Sutra. How appropriate for these times. 

 In the Sutra the Buddha tells many stories of a metaphoric nature. The one which sticks with me is about children fixated on playing with their toys in a burning house.  While the conflagration grows around them, they see and think of nothing but their toys. So it has been with most of us in this world of ours.  We have distracted ourselves with our toys, our ambitions, our disappointments, our desires and our anger. 

 But the conflagration of the pandemic is upon us, and we cannot help but pay attention to it. It has taken away so many toys (and of course lives and livelihoods) that we cannot help but look around and wake up at least a little to what really matters, to what is essential. And to look into the depth of our hearts to find what we really care about.

Being at Home

One day I was complaining to Tara Tulku about something. At the moment I cannot remember just what it was, and actually it does not matter.  What matters was his response when I said that if only things were different I would be happy, if only I was doing something else and doing it somewhere else, then I would be happy.  He looked at me and said "You know, samsara is known to be everywhere." He stopped me in my tracks. At that moment I understood clearly that I could not escape unhappiness by being somewhere else, that elsewhere does not equal happiness, that happiness was not to be found anywhere if it was not to be found here --- wherever here was and whatever here was.

But it will come as no surprise that most of the time I forget this simple truth.  I keep thinking that if I just change something everything will be ok.  Actually, if I am honest, it seems that when I change something because I want it to be better it seems to end up worse. But then I am one of those guys who sees a glass half empty rather than half full.

When I asked ZaChoeje Rinpoche if his constant travel was not a bit tiring he said no it was not because he felt at home everywhere he went. He takes his happiness with him wherever he goes.

This makes me think about what it means to be at home and the sort of happiness which comes from truly being at home. To be honest, no matter where I am I do not feel at home. Not even in my home. In fact I don't think I have ever felt at home since I left my childhood home. But if I think about that deeply, I must conclude that even there I was pretty much just an alien in disguise. I had to leave home for the disguise to fall away and for my deep alienation to express itself.  What does this mean? I've been on the spiritual quest pretty much ever since I left my childhood home. Are these two things related?

One way I think about the Two Truths of conventional reality (how things appear) and ultimate reality (how things really exist) is that if we are even a little bit self-aware we will realize that we live in those two worlds simultaneously. We live in the world of who we really are and the world of who we are constrained to be. They don't seem to line up. Earning a living, dealing with household finances, taking care of health problems, mowing the lawn -- this is the conventional world of constraints.  But in the very same moment I am paying the bills my Buddha nature is watching what is going on.  I think it must be smiling while my forehead is frowning. 

I suspect that the reason I don't feel at home is because I've not integrated these two worlds, have only intellectually accepted that the one is in the other, that they depend on each other. Sometimes when I meditate I can see how they line up and interpenetrate; I can experience it. Perhaps ZaChoeje has made this integration on a more consistent experiential level, realized their interpenetration more organically and sustains himself with one while he negotiates the other. I am reminded that of the five bodhisattva paths, the Path of Preparation is where one begins to transform the intellectual understanding of emptiness and the two truths into a more direct perception and experiential recognition of them. 

And I am reminded of the Zen teaching that our true nature is right here right now, whether I am mowing the lawn, sitting in meditation or writing. If I think about my childhood, and about when I felt at home, I must admit that I was at home whenever it did not seem to me that I was not myself. In times past people used to say that some people who grew old became more child-like. In fact sometimes really old people were disparaged for actually being child-like. Now that I am retired from my university career, perhaps I can dispose of the constraints I placed on myself to be the person I thought I needed to be and return to myself.  

Perhaps I will find my home again.

The Uselessness of the Heart Sutra

If we read and study the Heart Sutra we might wonder, what the heck does this have to do with the realities of my day-to-day life? I would observe that the Heart Sutra has nothing whatsoever to do with the material realities of day-to-day life. That is one of its great values.  As the sociologist Robert Bellah said (and I paraphrase a bit) no one can stand to live in everyday working life for very long; we need to take regular breaks from that reality.

"Form is emptiness, emptiness is form, form is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from form, whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is form."  If engagement with form (ie, matter, the material world) is everyday life, we need to contemplate emptiness to take a wholesome break from everyday life.  Form and emptiness are not fundamentally different, they are simply different perspectives on the same phenomenon. I think we need both perspectives to stay sane, and that is the point of the Sutra.  Most of us are conceptually mired in our relationship to form, to the material world. I, for one, need to take several breaks from materialism every day.

To take my little vacation from material reality I recall that the Sutra continues through all the five material senses until it gets to the mental sense. Then it repeats, "Consciousness is emptiness, emptiness is consciousness, consciousness is not different from emptiness, emptiness is not different from consciousness, whatever is consciousness is emptiness, whatever is emptiness is consciousness." Contemplating this is the most satisfying exit.

The Taoists point out that the value in a cup is found in the empty space which we can fill with water (or, in the morning, tea for me). The value of the Heart Sutra is precisely its material uselessness.

Aging with Humor and Beauty

It is good to keep a sense of humor as we go through our transitions from fall to winter.

And also to keep an eye open for the beauty in the seasons of life.