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HENG CH’AU: May 28, 1977. If you shut down the T.V., radio and records; stopped going to movies, reading newspapers, and novels; if you could stop eating meat, taking drugs, and stimulants; lay off sex for awhile; say nothing false or hurtful or even better not talk; if you stoop nibbling and snacking and shopping and "going out"--if you could do these things just for a day or a week you would never be the same. Would it be serene and peaceful? No! The noisiest place you’ll ever find is your mind. But you would be checking out the mind ground and on your way to the most exciting, fulfilling adventure you could ever image. At first it’s pretty dark so you need to take some light. What kind of light? Your light. The light that’s your share, your pure natural wisdom-light. The leas leaks you leave the more clarity you’ll have to light your way. Reduce outflows with precepts and regain your original magnanimity. Then you can check out the mind-ground with minimal stumbling and getting lost.
Oh yeah! Find a good knowing teacher until you find the one within you. Why! Because you’ve been away so long you don’t even recognize your home when you see it or the false either. With a good knowing advisor you can get profoundly lost and then really find something within nothing; nothing within something.
Do it soon because somewhere inside each of us knows we will have to do it. If you wait until near death you won’t have much say about who goes with you, where, for how long, and you might not get another chance for a long, long time. Hurry, grab the true or you’ll be late for your funeral and miss your birthday.
Every bow I can see more clearly.
Every bow I am happier I left home.
My mother used to can and pickle most of our food for the winter. We wore fireman red underwear to save on the expense of more coal for the furnace. Most of our clothes were made by friends or relatives or were hand-me-downs. We didn’t have a T.V. at first and before the radio we used to just go for walks after dinner, wrestle in the back yard, or fight for the bathtub. The huge McIntosh apple tree in the back yard was for pies, cobblers, apple sauce, a tree house, swings, shade, bird houses, watching huge black ants, wasp nests, apple blossoms in the spring and colored leaves in the fall to take to school, and the dirty job (cleaning up molding apples from the yard). One car got everything done including a weekly trip to the farm for fresh eggs, vegetables, berries, gossip, and a chance to watch a chicken die and a calf get born. We could walk to any store; our grandparents could hear us play and watch us get in trouble. We went "swimming" and watered the lawn and garden all in one shot; and ate left-overs on Fridays and Wednesdays.
When the bank bought the house for business and rezoning the apple tree went along with the maples, the tree house, wasps, birds, black ants, and blossoms. The house was leveled for a parking lot and a very nice "new" one was offered in the suburbs. A lot more had changed too. Electric appliances and frozen foods replaced canning and trips to the farm. Supermarkets wiped out smaller family-run shops and markets and my father’s job too. He went to work in a factory without a complaint but heard him cry at night and knew.
The T.V. was colorchrome and soon replaced the fireplace and dining room table as the center of the house. Joe sold almost all his farmland to an insurance company and now bitterly watches commuters and an office building where the sun used to set behind a lone withered elm tree in the pasture.
The last time I was home I was talking to my father about cultivating the Way--how it’s really just getting rid of all the things that keep you from your originally bright and pure nature. It’s always there, the same, we just cover it over, chase a lot of empty pleasures and forget about it. "The false became the true and the true got lost in the shuffle." - Master Hua
"You know," my father said, "if I had a million dollars, do you know what I would do?”
"I’d put together piece by piece our old house on Lawrence Street--every crayon mark and crack. I often sit here and I can still see it so clearly. Things were much simpler and happier then. I’m not just sentimental--something basic was there."
"I know what you mean. That’s why I am studying Buddhism."
I left home to find home.
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Offering: lunch and money for meters and phone
After lunch a bird came and sat in the doorway. We gave it some bread but after eating one small piece it kept refusing and just watched us intently. Heng Ch’au told it was a bird because of retribution and that it should resolve its heart on Bodhi and take refuge with the Triple Jewel. Heng Sure gave it the Triple Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows and closed with "gate, gate, paragate, parasumgate, bodhisvaha." The bird left and later came back and chirped something or other and disappeared.
So far twenty lady bugs, one bird and one fly.