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Heng sure
GOLD WHEEL TEMPLE
March 3-5, 1978
Living beings falsely discriminate
"This is the Buddha, this
is worldly."
One, who penetrates the nature of dharma,
knows there is no Buddha and there is
no worldly.
Avatamsaka sutra
"Verses in praise in Tushita
Heaven palace chapter."
Friday above Cambria. No one comes to pick us up. Big rainstorm moves in. rock-throwing attacks at night by local young men increasingly intense. Despite imminent rendezvous, we decide to expediently leave the bowing area for a hiding spot on a back road behind tall bushes. Hard rain continues. We sigh and abandon hopes of seeking the master this month. We resolve to stay out and work harder. Heng Sure hears alarm bells in his head. Sat., six am. Familiar blue VW bus appears before our dragon. It's Hung ju fur Shr! How in the world? 'I drove in every driveway and side road for miles! After three hours I said, "heck with these guys, I'm going to go meditate. So I turned off the highway, turned right up this tiny back road and here you are,"
Many sections of highway one washed out, or flooded with mudslides as we travel south.
Interview with the master Saturday evening. "Would you like to accompany me to Malaysia? You can bow just like to accompany me to Malaysia? You can bow just like you do when you visit this place. You protect my dharma, I'll protect yours,"
Being near the master feels so good that you don't realize he is leading you to the edge of your capacity to cultivate and then slightly beyond. Only when he steps back do you see the new space on all sides. Test: do you scramble to float on safe, old ground or do you scramble to float on the new water? Another analogy: Shih fu's dharma talks fill us full of light and juice as they pinpoint our faults and cracks. We then scramble to hold the juice in, by patching the leaks as they appear. It's wonderful and bitter and hard and sweet all at once. It is priceless change to progress in cultivation. It feels like a light bulb dropped into a Japanese cut-paper lantern. The light streams out the holes. The master holds up his mirror of perfect virtue and deportment and we identify the holes and cracks in our lanterns. We listen to the dharma as the master gives us glue and patching compound to make our lantern whole and complete once more. The master called it "being able to read your own sutra, every false-thought is a chapter."
After ten visits to gold wheel since the trip began, I can now identify some of the repeated mistakes I repeated time and again: reading my sutra.
Our new route over the mountains is approved. Wilderness pilgrims!
First volume of our journals published. Official verdict: "like a piece of toast seen on top of a garbage can-something no one wants. I'm waiting for the time when you merge your experience with the principles of Avatamsaka sutra-that will be wonderful.
Giant, violent thunderstorm Saturday night. D.M. Heng Ju who's sailed some heavy seas, calls it "the worst storm ever seen". At 1 AM , a lightening bolt crashes down just outside our rain-swept garage. A deafening flash of thunder and light.
Driving back to San Luis, Heng sure reciting Kuan yin's name, nods out behind the wheel. Bus lurches towards the shoulder. Sudden sharp rapping on the head wakes him just in time to swerve back on the road. Who did that? No one there.
Heng Ju and bill Irelan tune the dragon and repair the window hinge that kept the tailgate shut since Ventura. Car runs and feels like new.
Coasting on the glow of the master's energy. Have to work to return to our own stream. The key words: "This is you own responsibility. Bring the dharma to the west. Work as if you were all alone!"
"...I should be a path for all beings so that they can reach wisdom....." -- (Ten Transferences)