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HENG SURE: June 20, 1977. The state of mind of a Bodhisattva is not describable. But in words it might be: relaxed, alert, expansive, light, positive, energized, responsive, flexible, patient, fixed, receptive, unmoving, unlimited, happy, compassionate. Even and level towards all things, he does not act for himself.
My state of mind on this road: none of the above. HENG SURE: June 20m, 1977. About 20 minutes before we leave to start bowing, fire trucks, ambulances, rescue squad, tow trucks and police cars raced by. Right where we stopped bowing last night and where we were to start this A.M., about four or five cars wiped out, caught on fire, rolled down the side of the hill. It was really terrible and so fast.
Always being tested, always flunking. The hostile police and the bridge woman were tests. False thinking is like being blindfolded. Never see things as they are because the mind is moving, not still and reflecting. The police and the woman are teachers testing the false thinking novice. "No false thinking" continues to be the simple instruction from the Master. We have all the tools we need to do it and yet flop.
For me the sutras come alive, mean something, only when I am practicing. It’s like they speak to the unobstructed heart and pure mind (or as close as one can get). The intellect reels out and scrambles up trying to understand and "make sense" of the Dharma.
Three cheers for Vajra Bodhi Sea. Aching, thirsty, and drained, I sit down on the highway and try to find some spark to keep going. Open VBS to a picture of the Master lecturing the Avatamsaka and the Instilling Virtue meditation circle. Instant renewal! Better than a cool lemonade shower.
Some More Thoughts on Impermanence
Impermanence everywhere. Blowing my mind! Cities built on shifting a sand dunes and seismic fault and rift zones. Step on solid ground and my foot goes right through like chiffon pie or cotton candy.
Away from the smoothly paved city streets with food and drink delights in every block—away from that--things look pretty raw. No buffer cushion of packaged luxuries (electricity, ice boxed, tubs and showers, T.V., movies, drive-ins, fast foods) to keep the stark impermanence out. The realities of a quickly passing physical existence go through barbed wire and everywhere stare and wait. Just look. It’s stopping my world.
Almost like being on another planet, bowing along the roadside. The cars and trucks whiz by riding the asphalt carpet river from city to city, illusory oasis to oasis. So fast they quickly disappear that soon we forget the machines--they aren’t real when you’re on foot--like metal clouds. Less and less we see folks out walkin’ the road.
The ground is hard, dry, and sharply jagged. Food is bitterly fought over, and there is little of it. Stop too long to contemplate it and it will stop you. Driving through, you escape for awhile but the natural forces will catch up sooner or later--even the cities. There are a lot of hungry ants out here. No joke.
I’ve seen highways in New Mexico they let go for a year or two. They were impassable. The earth reclaimed them—ate ‘em up. It’s a losing battle trying to fight and hide form King Yama. If we sat too long in one place the ants would gobble us up. Stop moving out here and the carrion, the sea, the earth would reclaim you faster than your next birthday.
One last thought. Bowing through an unpaved field, the ground is alive and moving and undulating and breathing with bugs, insects, worms, and organism. Everything’s moving! The earth, the rocks, the air, the water, and my mind, of course. Northing is stable or sure, nothing is fixed.
Not to cultivate the Way in the face of this? Now that is dumb!