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HENG CH’AU: May 17, 1977. Notes from the business district: “It’s still the same old story/ the fight for love and glory/ a case of do or die…” I feel like a huge x-ray eye, a ghost from another century or planet. Floating slowly along the ground, all my senses are hyper-tuned and receptive. In the market, sex and power are foremost. Each day, especially in the morning, the understanding deepens. This is all an incredible theatre--props, make-up, effects, curtains; behind it all is the original pure nature. All of this and all these beings are just the Buddha-the trips, the attachments, are manifest false thinking, just coverings over it.
Here we are closer to home, closer to the lives we were destined and groomed for--business, smarts, etc. Harder than Lincoln Heights, more threat, more hostility. It could be your husband or partner bowing. They see and we see and feel the affinities. It is much like one’s family reacting to one’s leaving home. Too close. The hardest to put down is the closest. Wilshire Blvd. doesn’t like these two monks at all!
I feel so free and clear, my eyes like cool high Sierra lakes, my heart empty, without fear or hate. It’s all the same, empty and wonderful.