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HENG CH’AU: June 25, 1977. Feel like a highly flammable asura. Touchy and itching for a fight. The fog, ants, diesel trucks, my little itchy bug-bites, a barbed wire fence feed the already dangerous flame. Anything catches when I am on all edges. And these edges? Where do they come from?
It is the energy pushing out, splashing uncontrollably inside--new and unsettled. It’s the ugly little ego fighting to keep the wheel--no way it’s going to "let go" easily. The self rears back and looks for a way to sabotage the cultivation, undermine progress. "Why don’t you criticize others, all their faults are so annoying?" it suggests. "You’d feel better." So the fight is on. Heated and subtle battles inside.
My struggles are with myself; with intrenched bad habits bred from greed, anger, and stupidity. Cultivation is just that. Keeping the work inside, defeating the sickness at home. It’s rally hard, but it’s all that counts. Nothing else and nobody else is going to free you.
There are 84,000 ways to make your "self" miserable. Bowing once every three steps is just one of them. They all work and I suspect they’re all the same--precious jewels.
Four cautious surfers muster courage to tip toe up and ask. We must really look like Yellowstone bears. Leonora and Clarisse bring lunch offering and supplies.
"State"
During the Avatamsaka reading I experienced the following: I felt I had come home. My wildest hope and secret fantasy, not expressible in words, is true--it exists. Like jumping into a cool lake on a dusty, hot day. No doubt or fear or need for cynicism. Like jumping over a crevass. Never have to go back again. Just what somewhere inside I’ve been looking for--for so long that I forget. Like peeking through a small window into a wonderfully, inconceivable great hall--adorned and with no trace of anything negative or confused. "Oh, it’s really there. It does exist. It wasn’t just in my mind." And then someone opens the door saying, "Come in if you like--lots of rooms." And the voice is like all of your mothers or your own. Then suddenly and very subtly whatever separates this world and that inconceivable one is gone, dissolve, and you are really there!
And yet it’s all gone like a dream upon waking--fading, fading--like night animals and spirits going home before the sun rises. So subtle and elusive, un-mistakenly familiar.
A bald man knelt on the should with hands folder in prayer waiting for us to pass.
Mental Breakdown
"Funny." Said the man.
"What?" said I.
"Well, I was just driving past and saw you two and thought, ‘I’ really like to talk with them but there’s no place to stop.’ So I kept going."
Me: "And?"
Man: " Just then my truck broke down. That’s over there." Pointing to a camper pickup. "So what are you doing?" We had a short conversation about bowing once every three steps and Gold Mountain. He was looking hard for something and he thought we might have it. Talking about it, I could see, wasn’t going to add or help either of us so I politely went back to bowing.
"I like rigorous training…No more weapons, huh? That’d be something!"