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HENG SURE: June 10, 1977. The Buddha nature is always there, still there like the moon in the still pond, but we can’t see it because of our falsely generated thoughts and because of our attachments--the limits we set for ourselves.
When you decide to see the Buddha nature and experience it, when you stop making the sparks in the mind that cloud over the view of the Buddha, stop making waves on the top of the pond that ripple the water and shatter the clear reflection of the moon, you’ve done it by hard work. It takes hard work to stop making those waves. It Is harder work to see the waves as natural and perfect, to let the wave be, but to be in perfect control of the waves you generate.
Some waves already exist, some you create. "Everything speaks the Dharma at all times, if only you can understand and recognize it." The work can be called purification-total control of your own share through constant mindfulness and the use of a dharma-method. Then when control of body, mouth, and mind is perfect, relaxed, and natural, when you control the waves you generate, the one day you will notice that everything else is part of the same big pond--and that making waves is what we all do.
Turn the Light Back
Looking outside of yourself to get the source of Buddhahood is not going to work. It is like sending the firemen out in all directions when the firehouse itself is burning. If they opened their eyes and truly saw, they would turn their hoses in and get to the source of the fire. If you want to end your afflictions, turn your attention and energy within. Save all that effort you waste by running out and around in search of peace and freedom in yourself. Buddhas dwell nowhere--they rely on nothing and they found nowhere and nothing--the original root zero within.
To desperately look outside is like squinting and stumbling in a dark room fooling with flashlights, burning fingers on spent matches, and then finding the window-shade, pulling it and realizing that the sun was shining outside all along--all you had to do was recognize it and really need it.
We set up limits for our senses, we build cages and traps for ourselves and then in the spaces we have squeezed ourselves into, we fight and struggle and cheat and hurt each other and complain about the cages we built (until we can afford a bigger one). What is needed is clear vision, inner reflection to return the light and seek yourself.
June 10 Dear Shih Fu,
We are parked in Will Rogers Beach, with the Pacific waving on the left and the metal river of Highway 1 flowing on the right. As we bow we make our own rhythmic waves, and the mountains came down to the shore in a graceful, waving motion, as if they, too, are bowing in the Dharma-body of Vairocana.
The chance to cultivate the Buddha’s Middle Way on a journey like Three Steps One Bow is truly wonderful. One might hope for such a chance and not find. I have written in the log about making the most of this chance and I will send it (a long essay) when the book is filled. Briefly, it says that to cultivate the Way successfully one cannot be casual or part-time or anytime. You can’t pretend, or fake it, or take vacations. You’ve got to really want to walk the Bodhisattva path, and want to make the total control of body, mouth, and mind a natural, genuine way of a life that comes from the core/nature. Nothing else will do the job. To try to act virtuous at one time and then forget it the next time is not the Buddha’s Way. In order to be truly worthy of your teaching, Shih Fu, in order to be worthy vessels of the Dharma, our cultivation has got to be right on all the time. For me this means when bowing, to bow without any false thoughts, without any desires or hopes or wishes. And then when the bowing is done, to act selflessly, to speak nothing, to have no selfish thoughts and to move only in accord with principle, so that every situation reflects the training and the consciousness of a cultivator at Gold Mountain. Our attitude out here on the road is that we are at Gold Mountain, not different.
That is the ideal and it is easy to say and hard to do; and it will take a total transformation of my nature to make it real. Nothing else will suffice. And going slowly as we are, there may be just enough time crack the "black energy barrel." Not a minute too long, and this fact makes me really ashamed. The daily bowing makes me realize that I have enough greed, hatred and stupidity for any three people. And that means I’ve got to work three times as hard to make the change; but if I’m going to be of any use to the Triple Jewel, that’s where the work is at.
Disciple Heng Sure bows in respect Heng Sure was born in October 1949 in Columbus, Ohio, the second of three children. At age 11 he had a vivid transcendental awareness of cosmic aloneness, realizing on some level that in the truest sense he had no identity. By age fifteen he was practicing Hatha Yoga. At 17 he encountered Chinese and went on to pursue that study at Middlebury in Vermont and in 1967 entered Oakland University, one of Michigan’s finest and most progressive liberal arts colleges, in Asian studies.
In 1968 while studying the Sixth Patriarch’s Sutra he had another transcending realization of wisdom inherent within. In 1969 he furthered his study of Chinese at Tung Hai University in Taiwan, and then went to Japan to "find" Zen. He lived in temples and at that time became a vegetarian. After graduating cum laude from Oakland he won a Danforth Fellowship, an honor bestowed upon students who show exceptional skills and concern for religious questions. Under its auspices he spent the summer of 1972 at the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies. He returned to University of California, Berkeely, to pursue his Masters.
In May of 1974 he entered Gold Mountain Monastery for a week of retreat, resolved to leave the home-life and, received the complete precepts in the 1976 transmission at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. (Continued :Turn the Light Back)
Plunged into the metal river (The Detroit River says Heng Ch’au) at 4:30, bowed upstream into terrific honking, catcalls, screams and shouts. Underface (not only underfoot) is glass of all colors, trash, and real cast-off first--unhealthy man-made stuff. We move on in the cloudless ocean heat beside the ritzy Bel Air Bay Club who fenced us all out and one paint line keeps the Cadillacs from mashing the monks. The Protectors are also in evidence. Almost to an end of the day, a hairy sybarite couple, necking as they walk, approach. The man says, "Here, peace--oh yes, peace" and cups money in his hand. I refer him by gesture to Heng Ch’au. They smile in a happy dzed ort of way and walk back to their car without a word, necking as they go. Later Heng Ch’au syas, "Half a Buddha."
"Huh?"
"It was a $50.00 bill," he says.
What do you know. Got our feet wet in the metal river today, a taste of the next 650 miles.