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HENG SURE: June 3, 1977. Upasika: "How long have you been with Shih Fu?"
Heng Ch’au: "A year."
Upasika: "Only a year?"
Heng Ch’au: "Time time."
Upasika: "You were with him before?"
Heng Ch’au: "Sure. Lots. Weren’t you? If I were really smart I wouldn’t have come back this time, because I never
would have left."
Upasika: "When I first came to Gold Mountain years ago with my mother, I wasn’t too impressed, you know. Excuse
me for saying this, but it was so dark and there were all those American people and I didn’t even see Shih Fu. My
mother just went in, bowed to the Buddhas and jetted back out of there."
Heng Ch’au: "You know the saying, ‘False outside, true inside’."
Upasika: "Right. So why won’t the Shih Fu advertise? He’s such a great man, you know, and yet he’s always telling
us not to talk about him. How come so few people know about Gold Mountain?"
Heng Ch’au: "Basically it’s not Buddhism to talk about personalities. If it were advertised like that then everyone
would come expecting to be entertained--climbing on conditions--like going to a movie. In Buddhism you have to
really cultivate. ‘You yourself must walk the path, the Buddhas only show the way’."
Upasika: "Well nobody will ever find it then."
Heng Ch’au: "You did. Besides, when you’ve got the real thing, you don’t have to advertise it. The people who really
recognize you will come anyway. It’s just a matter of time. We’ve only begun Buddhism--the true Dharma--here in
the West. But it’s going to be here in this land for centuries. We’ve got to start slowly and surely.
Upasika: "How come you are eating so little?"
Heng Ch’au: "It’s funny, but I want to eat less because I want to bow more."
Upsika: "But if you don’t eat enough then you can’t bow at all."
Heng Ch’au: "So the answer is to eat just enough and bow just enough."
I see clearly that once you begin to cultivate and really do it, the only thing that can sustain you, actually save you, is continued vigorous cultivation. As soon as you let down or relax, all the energy you have built up can go the wrong way.
In the mornings I have to struggle to keep ahead of my new energy. It wants to go the wrong way already. It is potent, hard to resist, and requires a total dedication of will and then constant, mindful effort to keep it from flowing out the old channels. That would be a total loss, a tragedy, a waster, and a situation of real danger.
I just wish that my old habits were not so strongly burned in, and I wish that I hadn’t shortened my life-span and taken the deviant for the proper for so long. How can I avoid it in the future? I vowed to cut it off in this life and in all future lives. That will have to cover my early, forgetful years when the bad habits begin. It must work! This is too wrong!
The good-timers breakfast club in the Country Chicken Café in Santa Monica called the police on Heng Sure at 7:25 Friday morning-told the police that there was a crazy loose who was trying to climb buildings on Wilshire Boulevard. They were disappointed when Officer Kaiser, and three squad cars arrived, found everything in order, read his transit papers, said good morning, and left.
On The Edge
Feeling grouchy and irritable. "Don’t touch me!" "What do you mean, ‘get off the sidewalk’?” It’s the old/new energy rising and Heng Ch’au and I have to be alert every minute to keep it intact. We hope that we don’t explode and waste it before it goes where it is supposed to. Got to keep the work up but not more than we can absorb or else it’s start-over-again time. When we feel like this, the streets are an affliction griddle--the roaring metal river is gritting, broiling to head and hands, long and blinding, smoky with exhaust, fumes, dazzling with reflected sun, and noisy with whistlers, honks, cat-calls, stares.
I remind myself that no one put me here but me myself. All I have to do is stand up and walk away and I can have all the sense pleasures there are in the world, without having to leave my own condominium pool. Don’t be such a sap.
The worst part is doing the form right and then losing your concentration for one instant when a woman walks near you and you feel your energy change involuntarily. You feel cheated, betrayed, robbed of all your treasures. Oh, my, no, the Dharma is not easy to master. Not at all.
Patience is number one. Compassion, and vows to take them all across. If thee were no self, who would there be to get angry? Just grow up and work hard.
The Mysterious Exploding Orange Juice
The layperson brought two half gallons of Vita-Pakt orange juice (from concentrate, no sugar added) for lunch "This should hold you until Friday," she said. "Forget that one bottle. It’s fermented already.” (Orange juice? Fermenting?) I took up the bottle, shook it, and it gushed up all over my arm like orange soda on a hot day. Son of a gun, carbonated orange juice. Well, it didn’t start out that way. What makes it fizz? I wondered.
Innocently I capped the bottle and set it back in the box intending to give it to the layperson to take back for a refund.
The next afternoon we took the usual lunch hour and visited the Santa Monica police to report in and check out. As we got out of the van at 11:30 when we normally eat, there was a "punt" "tinkle" sound and the side curtains were suddenly wet. And orange. Heng Ch’au had not even taken the key from the door he was locking, so we opened the van to discover the force of the gaseous orange juice had shattered the heavy glass half gallon container and had sent shards and missiles of glass and spits of orange juice all over the rear of the car. Had he eaten at the usual time we would have been picking glass from our eyes for days.