Bowing Journals | Top | << Back | Next >> | End
HENG SURE: June 30, 1977. Notice that every time I start bowing after resting, that is, once in the morning and once in the afternoon, I get a prickly, tingling on top of my head--sometimes it happens on its own at random times. Is it energy channels opening? New blood vessels being cleansed? Old memories and garbage being purged? Bodhisattvas rubbing my head? Bugs? My imagination?
Why do I feel so happy doing this work? Because there is nothing more deeply satisfying than using all your energy to bring about something you believe in. Acting for your beliefs is a kind of pure action. The trick is to be all there.
"There are very few people doing something about what they believe in," Santa Monica social worker.
The feeling of doing this work is like this: You’re on a high and narrow mountain road. You’ve got to get to the bottom. You’re riding a bicycle only you don’t know how--you’re just learning. You keep falling left and right, slipping off the center of balance, not going fast enough. If you go too fast you’ll go over the edge of the road. Sometimes you succeed and ride along for short distance and then road changes, twists, or changes in texture or you bump into someone and fall off. If you watch too closely you can’t stay up.
The only method that works is to stay in the middle of the road on the middle of the bike, at a moderate speed with eyes open, watching for changes and steering through as best you can. There can be no thinking--this guarantees a disaster with each new turn--or a full stop, or a straight line over the side because you were thinking and didn’t notice the danger.
Everything you find yourself doing it right, there is a homing beam, invisible hands that help you towards your goal and keep you on your bicycle.
Lead by Compassion
In Vajra Bodhi Sea #83-85 the Venerable Abbot discusses in a Ch’an session the Ch’an Masters who are pressured by ghosts, tigers, or by pain into real cultivation of the Way. This is right on the mark, as Shih Fu always is. I’ve discovered the sad but unmistakable truth of my cultivation--I only progress when I’m miserably oppressed by something. If I’m feeling fine, with no major problems going on, I tend to coast along and daydream.
I need to get to a point where I absolutely have to keep my mind empty or else the suffering is too great, and then I can really do it. Pain and fear are two effective motivators to good work. Last Sunday, for the first time, happiness kept me in the middle of my balance-point. Could you be a Ch’an Master pressured (or lead on) by happiness? I would like to do my best work because of clarity of vision in seeing the importance of the work we’re doing. That’s the kind of pressure that would be best.
Dharma Masters lead by compassion, Dharma Masters lead by resolve to attain, Dharma Masters lead by the need to save others, Dharma Masters lead by the wish to fulfill his teacher’s vows.
Tears of Shame
"There are enough men cultivating the dharma-door of being a husband and father and there are not enough men cultivating the way of the left-home Bhiskshu on the Bodhisatta Path." This thought helped me leave home and brought tears to my eyes out here on the Avatamsaka Highway when I reflected on how far I have not come in fulfilling my promise to cultivate with diligence and to put down my selfish habits.
You’re Better Off
Although it is hot out on the side of the road--the blacktop sears your hands, head, and feet--it’s hotter in the hells. Hell-beings don’t get to stop at night to hear the Avatamsaka Sutra and bathe in its light. In the hells you roast all the time.
I am alive and able to cultivate, able to bow up and down on this griddle and I would rather do it than drive to the beach and surf or drink beer or shot "sucker" out of my car window. That’s life too, and all come this way before too long--patience and hard work are the key to the lock of existence.
Mundane Compassion
In the Saha, there is sweet in the bitter, when it is blazing hot, the ants, who have good send, hide away in their holes and we don’t squash them. When there is no wind or breeze to cool you off, then your sash and robe stay in place and you don’t use energy in tugging them around to keep from stepping on them while bowing.
Purity your Mind
Water and Mirror Reflections, the Venerable Abbot’s book, is a final statement , in essence. There is no essay more pure, more crystalline, more true than his thoughts on averting calamities. There is nothing left unspoken and nothing more to say.
The urge to action: purify the mind.
That is the big block before my every breathing moment: how to purify the rattling, chattering, low-key, foggy, and universally obscuring thinking machine; how to shut down its noise. The Master says turn affliction to Bodhi, like ice turns to water. You don’t stop the mind, that is death. Rather you purity its action: "The path of language is cut off, and the place of the mind’s action is eradicated." You hold it still, distract it and contemplate its emptiness and total dependence on the senses for its life. You control the senses, and so stop feeding the mind. Hold it in solitary with your recitation. Repent of past bad karma, erase it away, praise the pure and holy, keep your present deeds in front of your eyes and then be patient. Have pure faith that this method works. Then apply effort.
"Your work will not have been in vain."