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Sunday, May 29
Please do not worry about us - Heng Ch'au and I are doing okay - we've hit a regular pace - and bow about 5 ½ - 6 hours each day. We start bowing at 7:00 a.m., take one hour off at 10:30 to write and repair our gear or meditate - start again at 1:00 p.p. and bow until 6:00, taking twenty-minute stillness breaks each hour. At 6:00 we find a spot to part the van for the night, wash up, meditate, and prepare for wan k'e. We listen to the Avatamsaka each night - I recite and translate from Chapter One - we haven't got a tape recorder yet, so we haven't been able to listen to the takes of the Master and then we say the Shurangama Mantra forty-nine times (the short version) and then rest, as tired as young boys after a full day outdoors. I forgot to add that we get up at 4:00, do zao k'e and exercise, and then prepare to start by 7:00 a.m. As we leave the city behind we will be able to add more bowing hours each day.
Our bodies adjusted to the work slowly. We are exhausted each night and ready to go again each morning. We took our gloves last week because we felt it was insincere. These sidewalks are pretty smooth and we don't need gloves until we get into glass and gravel on the highway shoulder. We took off our sunglasses, too, because people thought we were hijackers. I started using kneepads several days ago after I developed a deep, aching bruise on my left knee from so much bowing. (pg 11)
With the kneepads I can bow all day - we did 6 hours and 20 minutes yesterday. As soon as the bruise heals, I'll take the pads off. Heng Ch'au is still wearing his hat to cover his leaving-home burn scars, but they will be all healed within a week. We have stopped all useless talking - plugged that leak.
The two of us are really looking forward to the Master's visit to L.A. next week. We long to hear the proper Dharma-wheel turned the way young babies rely on their parents. Our thoughts turn to the Venerable Abbot and to the Avatamsaka Assembly the way bees turn to honey.
We have bowed through Beverly Hills and we are nearing U.C.L.A. in Westwood. By next weekend we should be out of Santa Monica and on Highway 1, ready to trade our van for a cart and to start the long road north to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. Each time I think of Wan Fwo Ch'eng I visualize a bright torch in the gloom. The Master's vision of a Buddhist city based on true, wholesome principle is the very medicine for all beings. Sometimes while bowing along through L.A. , I feel myself at the point of tears - happy tears at the hope and the goodness in store for the West. We can turn our lives around and go towards the good and we now have a road to travel on, a road that will carry us, our parents, our friends, young and old, back to a place of purity and light, balance, and harmony. I wouldn't care if the road from L.A. to Wan Fwo Ch'eng was 70,000 miles instead of 700. I'd still feel it to be my sacred trust to bow and pace every step of the Way.
Disciple Heng Sure
bows in respect