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HENG CH’AU: May 27, 1977. A young woman, follower of Guru Maharaj Ji, stopped to try to figure out Three Steps One Bow.
"Why do you do such a hard, difficult practice?"
"Hard? It’s great! It’s easy. I’ve never been more peaceful or happier. You ought to try it, it’s easy." (To endure suffering really is to end suffering, but I’ve got to do it.)
Woman: "Well, I know what you mean. Even though I don’t actually physically bow, I feel it’s important to keep that kind of devotion here in my heart."
(This is like me before I left home rationalizing, "Well basically I’m a left home person even though I haven’t actually left home" or ”Well in my heart, you know, I’m really enlightened even though I haven’t really cultivated the Way yet.")
"How is it the Way, if you don’t walk it?" – Master Hua
"Practice and understanding mutually respond." – Master Hua
Woman: "Exactly what are you looking for?"
Monk: "Ten thousand Buddhas, enlightened beings."
Woman: "I’ve always felt close to what I read of the Buddha’s writings and sayings. Made me feel warm. They sounded true."
Bow, bow, bow--all the time bow. I have so much arrogance I don’t even see it until I start bowing. Like breathing--so unconscious, automatic--when you stop breathing you realize the importance of breath. When I start bowing I realize how huge my affliction of arrogance is. The bowing lifts that weight off my body. Lightness always follows bowing--bowing in one magic circle.
As kids it was so easy to tell the false from the true. It was obvious which kids shared and who was greedy, who looked for fights, and who had a chip. When you would get all dressed up, polished, permanented, you and everybody else knew it was an act, a play, a game. No one was deceived by curls and new clothes especially when they were used to flaunt for one upmanship. But it didn’t take long to get sophisticated. We cash in our share, our section of true nature, so easily. "Like a drunken sailor" my father would say, "you throw away the treasure and keep the trash."
Heng Sure and I are becoming real slobs, lacking taste and refinement and Three Steps One Bow is responsible. Everything is starting to blend into one hug conditioned dharma--perfumes, gas fumes, beautiful women, ugly men, beautiful mean, ugly women, rich and poor, fine food and scraps, ourselves, our fears, our fantasies--the same, all the same. The less we move the farther we go, the closer we get. The closer we get to what we never left.
Broken mirror, broken rules
Stupid and sloppy. Heng Sure and I have been getting sloppy, careless. Rapping too much, too long. Taking too long for lunch, starting ceremonies half an hour late at times. An attitude also of mine--one of arrogance and distancing, lack of compassion-crept in through the cracks. I left open by not following the rules. It shows up when I start identifying instead of identifying with, when I lose my mirror that allows me to see my faults when I see others, and others to see their faults when they see me; the same with virtues. It’s an old habit and a hard one to break. The way to control it is to first shut my mouth and then cultivate every move and minute like my life depended on it-not to be lax or indulgent or relax for a second. I can find all sorts of excuses for letting down (the tension of Three Steps One Bow, fear, pressure, physical fatigue) but they are just excuses covering the truth cop outs.
I feel deeply ashamed of wasting this time and opportunity as much as I have and resolve to keep tightening up and smelting until there is no residue of ego and affliction left. This can be done without losing a sense of humor and joy or blaming others (Heng Sure) for my mistakes. I know I can do it. How can I not?
As I was realizing all of this a black van roared by, hitting and smashing the outside mirror on the van. It didn’t stop. The incident confirmed feeling of having lost my mirror (compassionate eye and heart). Moreover, I knew that my sloppiness in following the rules left the hole for the black van to enter.
I want to join the ranks of the beings I saw yesterday, my teacher, the eternally dwelling enlightened beings of the ten directions. I better start acting like it. A single thought--Bodhi or botch.
Cars bumper to bumper as far as the eye can see. An average of one person per car. Sidewalks empty from person to person as far as the eye can see. Three Steps One Bow at a couple of points was moving faster than cards.
Two high school boys run across six lanes of moving traffic to find out what we are doing. En route they almost get run over by a hot motorist. The result: cussing, cursing, tempers, and horns.
Boys: "Why are you doing this?"
Monk: "To reduce the hate and bad vibes in us and the world."
Boys: "Huh?"
Monk: "Like that car back there that almost ran you over. Everybody blew up, got made. That’s the stuff wars come from. We all need to cool off."
Boys: "Yeah, really."
Monk: "What happened to your arm?"
Boy: "Surgery--bone chip from sports."
Monk: "The body just keeps breaking down. Even when you try to take care of it."
Camped by the even rolling, always fuming Detroit River again near Wilshire and Santa Monica.