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Dear Shih Fu,
I am in Lompoc at a gas station waiting for the car. Open, empty country is ahead with no towns and few gas stations for bowing miles. So I am in town getting supplies and needed repairs for the weeks ahead. Heng Sure is bowing in an isolated field-plateaus in the hills overlooking the Federal Prison on the fringe of Vandenberg Air Force base. This is where we camped last night. The mechanics have advice and humor on the roads ahead and wish us luck.
Shih Fu, it's funny, but lately on this pilgrimage I am finding it more and more natural and honest to be quiet. It isn't that there are no thoughts or feelings. I am happy and full, but not of conversation words. So it is difficult to write because this is a new and unfamiliar place. The words of the Sutras, especially the Avatamsaka, are what I like best to hear and repeat. They echo in our hearts all day and are part of this quietness. Other noises and sounds come and go, but the sounds of the Sutras are natural and blend with the stillness of the wind and the trees.
There is a subtle, peaceful merging of these principles and our minds. As we read to each other from the Sutras our faces and eyes light up, saying "Hey! Yeah! That's it! That's the way it is!" heads nodding, faces smiling in agreement. It often feels as if we have another person with us-a wise and infallible friend who understands our deepest thoughts and feelings-the Avatamsaka Sutra.
What we experience, the Sutra explains; what the Sutra explains, we experience. When we get to a place in cultivation neither of us has been before, invariably in the evening of the Sutra glows, explaining and expounding on the state. Inconceivable! And there is so much to enter and explore!
As we bowed through the small town of Vandenberg Village at sunset Tuesday, a crowd of some thirty people gathered around - watching, discussing, and wondering about us. A little old man stepped out of his house, respectfully walked up and made an offering. With a kind smile and a gesture of his arm to the North, he said without words, "Hope this helps you on your way. Keep going. Good Luck." Suddenly the tense and uncertain crowd that had quietly watched this dispersed. In a matter of minutes they came streaming back laden with money and food offerings. Old people and young, little kids and grandparents, all smiling, giving, and wishing us well. The power of giving and gathering in one person turned a practically hostile crowd into happy well-wishers.
Driving back from the gas station I found Heng Sure smiling and full of light and peace, bowing in a wind-blown, empty field off Highway 520. As we quietly sat inside the old Plymouth eating a lunch of bread, fruit, nuts, and vegetables, I realized we had bowed ourselves into another world - a crystal [...]