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HENG CH'AU: May 23, 1977. After a humorous, mad, crazy, chaotic dream 1 am feeling incredible. I keep understanding "seeing"??it's like I’ve got eyes all over my body??they smell and feel, see through walls and for miles and the tip of my nose. I feel such a sense of freedom, ease--light of heart and spirit. Nothing matters, it's all ok. Just fine. The harder I work, the more difficult it is, the happier and more free I am and the more “seeing” occurs. The funniest and most empty of all is “me,” my “self.” The humor begins there and then expands. Where are the words to describe this-- can’t find them. It’s too large, too mobile and fluid to be held and looked at. Just then it’s gone. Try to cacth it, it’s gone. Its truth is no self and it flees my mad grasping mind. And yet it’s right here now all of us, awake or sleeping, thus. Very funny, deadly serious.
Laughing so hard I step into dog excrement. I’ve got to be careful not to float away. Humus (ground), humor, humility.
The Cadillac dealership on the corner has an armed guard by the front door loaded and deadly 45 cal., waiting. Now what’s that about? Nobody’s going to shoplift a 3-ton car. Is it part of the exclusive mystique? To protect what? How many times have we been killed by angry eyes? What would happen if when all this repressed hate and anger spilled forth there were guns with it? Who could you kill? Most murders in the U.S. are between relatives. But who isn’t a relative--part of the family? If you would kill for a Cadillac then what would you do if your spouse or favorite T.V. shows were killed? If you stubbed your toe or were ridiculed by a bunch of kids?
It’s an escalating circle, this anger and revenge, pride and fear. It starts with a single false thought in our hearts and ends up in a holster of a guard in a car showroom. On a larger scale it’s floating overhead right now in huge bomber planes and in the hills nearby in ICBM’s. It all comes from the mind. We need to work harder on Three Steps, One Bow: I got angry over a parking ticket and the armed guard thinks we are positively stupid. That’s the stuff wars are made from, and droughts.
“Meter Man” who collects coins shows up. We saw him last week too on Wilshire and talked briefly then. Today he says, “Someboy else did this bowing thing.”
“Really.”
“Yea. All the way across the country.”
Us: “Someboy’s more stupid than us?”
Man: “Oh, no. Not stupid, just devoted.” A big change from last week’s smirk. Don’t take any wooden nickels.
Twenty or thirty men in various jock outfits are waiting anxiously outside Jack La Lanne’s Health Spa this a.m. as we bow by. In the preface to the Bodhisatta precepts it says, “A strong body in good health is like a ragingly wild stallion for it is impossible to retain it long. The passing of a person’s life is as fleeting as the bounding waters of a mountain stream. Although one may be alive and healthy, it is impossible to guarantee even one more day of survival.”
L.A. isn’t exceptional really. It’s just a concentrate and a few degrees more extreme than much of America and the world. Looking outside for solutions and escapes from the inevitable death and birth, birth and death is as timeless as birth and death itself. In L.A. the search for outside ways is pushing the limits. Fad food, bottled immortality, health spas to retard and even stop decay and aging abound. In Forest Lawn Cemetery nobody is really dead—they’re resting, waiting, vacationing, meditation, listening to music, etc., anything but rotting and returning to the elements.
This frantic last minute clutching and seeking is what happens when there’s no other way to investigate death and dying. Even your new car won’t keep out King Yama when it’s time. It was on this issue: what happens when you die and before you’re born that my sister and I were finally able to connect and talk truly and Buddhism and cultivation. Ultimately that’s what it’s about. She knew it. I knew it. The men at the health spa know it and I suspect all the “loved ones” at Forest Lawn know it best. There’s a lot of people looking, wondering, and hoping to stop the wheel.
Lunch conversation:
Upasika: “There are a lot of Jewish people in this area. Have you noticed any differences from the last neighborhood?”
Monk: “We don’t see many people--I mean we don’t meet any people because we’re invisible.”
Upasika: “Huh?”
Monk: “Well, we are going s slow and everybody else is going so fast they don’t see us. We are right there but can’t be seen.”
Other monk: “We could probably sit in full lotus in the middle of a street and nobody could see us unless we went as fast as they were going.”
Monk: “Probably is we could slow ourselves down more we might be able to see the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.
Upasika: “Eat some more.”
Later…
Upasika: “How long did it take you to learn the Great Compassion Mantra?”
Monk: “It depends. If you hear it a lot and work hard maybe three months--otherwise longer.”
Upasika: “It’s really hard. I’ve been doing a couple of lines a day--but it’s hard.”
Monk: “That’s really good. The Great Compassion Mantra is a wonderful Dharma door. Do you know about Kuo Kuei (Nicholson’s) father?”
Upasika: “No.”
Monk: “Well, Kuo Kuei’s father had cancer and was dying, so Kuo Kuei made a vow that his father wouldn’t die of cancer and recited the Great Compassion Mantra everyday many times.”
Upasika: “Did he die of cancer?”
Monk: “No. If you are really sincere, the mantra is very powerful.”
Upasika: “Hmmm.” (obviously moved.)