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April 8, 1978
Third waterfall above Ragged Point,
Monterey County
Dear Shih Fu,
Shih Fu, we won't be able to be with you on your birthday this year, but we will bow to you nine times here on the road and wish you many happy returns, with all our hearts. Here are some of the recent mind-changes on Three Steps, One Bow:
Heng Ch'au, Upasaka Kuo Chou Rounds, and I bowed around a steep rise and wham! There before us stood the next three weeks of our lives, etched in green stone and blue water; twenty miles of awesome rocks in the slanting afternoon sun. The first sight of the sheer cliffs falling straight to the azure ocean took my breath away. We could see tiny flecks of sun-glare on glass: cars and campers rolling on a tiny thread of highway stuck on the mountainside, halfway between oblivion and nowhere. We were going to bow on this road? My first impulse was to follow an old habit energy and let my mind dive into a daydream, to avoid facing the reality.
But I couldn't do that. A new yang energy that's been slowly building took control and brought my heart back to focus on the work. What came to mind was this passage from the Sutra lecture the night before:
Although he causes all existence to be purified, He does not make distinctions amid all that exists. And he is caused to be happy, with a purified mind. In one Buddhaland, he relies on nothing. In all Buddhalands it is the same. Nor is he attached to conditioned dharmas, Because he knows that in the nature of the dharmas There is nowhere to rely. Avatamsaka Sutra Ten Transferences Chapter
I applied the Sutra passage to this situation: only hours before, I had been bowing on Huntington Drive, outside Gold Wheel Temple in L.A.; where were there any dharmas to rely on there? Where was L.A. now? When I was in L.A., where were these mountains, this ocean? How was this moment any different from that moment? I couldn't find any differences! So what was there to hide from? Why take a vacation in false-thoughts? It's nothing but the sad little ego looking for a way out of the pressure of slow, steady work on the mind-ground. What would Shih Fu ...