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HENG SURE: May 22, 1977. For the first time I'm feeling a build-up of concentration like an engine that slowly warms up during the first morning hour of bowing and then maintains its heat through lunch (This is new! Halleluyah!) and then continues to run strong in the afternoon. I look forward to when Heng Ch’au and I have our routine down so we can maintain a pure, silent cultivation and concentration.
We are into wealthy neighborhoods: each house is a fantasy of elegant noble living memorialized in stone. Each arched?top carriage house a picture, the Mercedes parked lust so, the expansive lawns green despite the water?rationed drought. The slate roofs and marble porticos frame the baronial splendor of the gardens and walks. Everything is perfect??all drawn from "House and Garden.” But the residents are not so finely built, especially the children. Two young boys owning the street we audaciously crept along--one on a 20-speed bike and one on a $30 skate board move languidly out of the way to allow our van enough room to pass. Young boys 12-14 years old, their play clothes bought at Bullock’s -- from tousled hair to racing shoes all the finest -- but their faces? Ghost-like, pale and puffy. Their eyes have no spark, no wonder, no interest. They represent a dull challenge to authority. They are children off the edge. They do not seek knowledge of the world. They have been swamped in materiality--been given every possible toy and game and food and tool. They are overstuffed with protective concern but undernourished on love and learning. Dull, yin, passive, and angry, the boys had no masculinity, no Mars, no humour: only the blank mouth-open sniffle of a child. They need a father, a grandfather, older brothers, a neighborhood, a day and night without color TV, pajamas, the kitchen, interviews with parents, etc. They need love and life. If they grow up without it, the world will suffer when they come into power.
Sometimes I am aware of the weight of the vow is bring the Sutra home to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. The work ahead is easy if you go straight, and hard if you slip off.
We are adrift in Los Angeles, Dharma fugitives in a sea of Saha suffering.
The job for us is to learn to be left?home people all the time. We must learn to behave as models of deportment for left?home people and for lay people.
We have to face our own situations, apply correct principles, and set up
the proper dharma.
HENG CH'AU: May 22, 1977. Last night I was set and sat upon by two something or others. In my sleep, a "dream", two beings were holding me down, smothering me. I could not get free. I was trapped-- overweighted -- almost like being caught in a heavy sticky spider web, only it was these two people. Suddenly I became aware that they were after my essence. Involuntarily, without pleasure, and despite my wild struggling, I could feel myself losing. I yelled, "Shih Fu, Shih Fu." Just as I had no more strength to fight it, Shin In appeared. "You can't do that. Stop! This is not allowed," he commanded the two beings. They split. I was free and still intact.
I need to be more careful about false thinking, about leaving cracks or holes for outflows. It is very difficult and subtle??so fine can be an outflow.
Offering: two pairs of shoes, four pairs of sucks, lunch, alarm clock, and cheese.
Food and Cultivation. On weekends especially the lay people inundate us with food and goodies. It's real easy to blame others for your own greed. For awhile there were lots of donuts and pastries showing up. We gobbled them. They kept coming. At first we looked outside and said, "Now this is no good. This sugar is messing up our bowing and desires. How can we tell them. They wouldn't really understand and might feel insulted." etc. But if we had taken one donut, split it and said no thank you to the rest, there would have been no problem. Because we ate them, they concluded, "They like sweets." So we turned the eyes within and stopped eating the sugar treats and what? Haven't seen even a cookie since. We are in part what we do and people see and trust this more clearly than what we say.
Had cheese for lunch and in first bow after I couldn't concentrate for diddle. Felt like my head was coming off. Scratch cheese. My temples were bursting.
In general, the lay people here are really excited about giving; creating blessings and merit through giving and supporting the Sangha. The amount and intensity of this sincere giving far exceeds what Heng Sure and I need and at some point obstructs our cultivation, because we let it. It was time to say something but not something that would stop the flow. Rather we wanted to do it in a way that would enlarge and expand it to where it was needed. Don't cut it off, channel it. A delicate issue for sure. We put together some ideas and waited for the right time to say it. Sunday was the birthday of Shakyamuni Buddha and everybody came ready to hear some dharma after lunch. Here's how it went:
On Shakyamuni Buddha's birthday I felt it would be appropriate to say a few words to all of you. Being a good Dharma Protector is very much like being a good gardener. The most important jobs are keeping out pests and predators and caring for and nourishing the plants and flowers to insure their continual healthy growth.
You people have made this trip possible through your good care of us in Los Angeles. Most likely we could not have come this far if it were not for your generosity and concern. But we can not settle for the small and forget the bigger picture. In this regard I am reminded of a story about the time my grandfather asked me to water the flowers. I went out to the garden with the water and found the flowers, big white mums, and I gave each blooming flower a dose of the water. I returned and grandfather said, "Did you water the flowers?" "Yes, I did," I replied.
Several weeks passed and I became the regular gardener. Before long I noticed that the flowers looked sad and droopy. I asked grandfather what was wrong and he watched my method just once and said, "Look here, you can't just water the blooms; you've got to water the whole plant, especially the roots. If you water the roots, the blooms will grow lust fine. But if you water just the blooms then the whole thing will soon die."
This was the principle of good gardening that I learned from my grandfather: water the roots and the whole plant flourishes. And we can apply this same principle to the work of spreading the Dharma in America.
Heng Sure and I are like two flower blooms. We are the visible part of Gold Mountain Monastery. Our needs are very few. We are out here doing this work so as to endure suffering. It is said that "to endure suffering is to end suffering, but to receive your blessings is to exhaust your blessings." We must take this chance to cultivate and really endure some bitterness so that there will be more merit to transfer to the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. That is our work.
Now your work of Dharma protection is also very important. Of all the perfections, giving is foremost. Here in the frontier of the Proper Dharma in the West there is an unexcelled chance to create great blessings and to make measureless amounts of merit.
So like a good gardener we must not just water the blossoms and forget the roots which are the Venerable Abbot and the entire Sangha of Gold Mountain Monastery. We must expand our compassion and giving and work in a garden of larger scope.
Don't settle for the small and just use energy to give to these two flowers when there is a whole plant to nourish and protect and help grow. When the plant of the Dharma grows into a healthy, broad Bodhi tree, then all living beings can enjoy its fruit and take refuge in its shade. Find the big plant and nourish its roots and in this way be a Dharma Realm gardener.
As the Buddha Shakyamuni, the Tathagata, was known as the "doubly complete one," complete in blessings and complete in wisdom, his blessings came from his perfection of giving and making others happy. His wisdom came from cultivation and as we are all going to be Buddhas in the future, we should recognize the importance of working hard right now on our own cultivation. Whether you recite the Buddha's name or Kuan Yin Bodhisattva's name, or whether you recite a mantra or read sutras or hold the five precepts: no killing, no stealing, no lying, no sexual misconduct, and no taking intoxicants, all of these are excellent ways to cultivate wisdom. Precepts come first, then concentration comes from regular practice and then wisdom is produced. It appears from your own Buddha?nature.
So we should put these principles into practice and resolve to cultivate a big Buddha?garden and grow ten thousand doubly?perfect ones and not rest until the work is complete and all living beings end their suffering!
Sunday P.M. Just finished bowing. There was a lot of anger and hostility in these last 6 or 7 blocks. People have got to be sitting on some kind of huge powder keg to be that stirred up by a couple of bowing monks.
You know how it hurts to be touched when you have a really bad fever? I think it's something like that. But how can you get better until you're sick of being sick?
"Get up you fools, you sick or something?" and a squeal of rubber.
Paying money for drinking water end to use a toilet and air raid sirens every four blocks, now that makes sense, but bowing and seeking to reduce hostility and disasters, now that's just stupid and embarrassing.
Young boys, "Do you believe in God?"
Monk: "Sure. All of them."
Boy: "Do you believe in Jesus?"
Monk: "Believe what?"
Boy: "That he was the Savior."
Monk: "Did he save you?"
Boy: "Yes, he did."
Monk: "Then he must be, right?"
Boy: "What do you believe in?"
Other boy: "Do you believe in the devil?"
Monk: "Yep. I believe in everything: you, me, the ants, the air, Jesus,
Allah, the grass, your parents... 1 believe all gods and devils are inside
of you, too."
Other boy: "What?"
Monk: "When you're really good and peaceful isn't that like God?"
Boy: "Sure."
Monk: "And when you're full of hate and anger, who's that?"
Other boy: "The devil!"
First boy: "No, no, no! God is all forgiving."
Monk: "Mostly it's important to be peaceful.”
Boys: "I can dig that??see ya mister."
Monk "See ya boys.'
Interesting thing happened while bowing. A group of hays gathered across the street building up for some amusing assault. Just then a police car passed, slowed and stopped??waiting. It was clear they were watching to see that we were not molested. Far out! Bit different from our first run-in at that upasika's garage! With the L.A.P.D. protecting Three Steps, One Bow -- well, who knows...