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Heng Sure
March 25, 1978
"Peeling his skin for paper, splitting
his bones for pens and drawing his
blood for ink, he wrote out sutras
stacked as high as Mt. Sumeru."
Avatamsaka Sutra, chapter 40.
Vairchana Buddha had a proper sense of values. The stinking carcass that we so treasure he saw as a tool. An object, a means to benefit others. He recognized the body as impermanent, going bad after very few years, turning weak and sick, returning to earth , air, fire, and water.
I practiced T'ai chi on the beach again this morning, the beach at low tide speaks the dharma of impermanence. Rotting wood from the eroding, shore, a fly-covered seagull, eyeless and hideous, the bleached skeleton of a California sea otter. My own decaying flesh bag stretching, cracking, beachsand. The running tide quickly erases the marks of my passing; in a few years I will be gone and forgotten, of no more consequence to the world than the gull, the otter, or the flies that pick their bones.
Yet if I can find the courage to follow Vairochana in study, to use my body to cultivate the way according to the eternally dwelling, indestructible dharma-nature, then my few years in this body will not have been wasted.
Heng Ch'au
Saturday
March 25, 1978
Last month Heng Sure was driving a bus back to San Luis Obispo after the weekend visit to see the master at gold wheel temple in LA. It was late and everyone was tired and sleeping in their seats. Heng Sure relates he was reciting he name of Gwan yin bodhisattva when fell sleep and drove the bus off the road towards the ditch. He felt a hand knock him on the head. He woke up just in time to pull the bus back on the road. It would have surely overturned. He looked around to see who had awakened him, but he was alone. Everyone was still asleep in the back of the bus.
"When people recite Kuan Shih Yin
Bodhisattva, know that for a space
of 40 yojanas, 3,200 miles, there
will be peace and no calamities."
From "listen to yourself"
By Master Hua
David (Kuo Chou) rounds, shows up to bow for a week.
The car is so full of offerings there's barely room to sit. Too much can be as big a problem as too little. "All who get enlightened walk the middle way." For a cultivator, that means too much or too little, good times or bad times, friends or enemies, inside it's always the same: peaceful, clear and unmoving, even in one's dreams.
"Walking, standing, sitting,
lying down, even in sleep and while
dreaming, the bodhisattva doesn't let
himself be obstructed for an instant."
Avatamsaka Sutra, 7th ground
I'm ashamed to admit how much false thinking I've done about food on this trip. And yet when I add it up, it comes to this: food has never been a problem. It's all in my mind. If I truly understood the way, how could I allow myself to be obstructed by anything? Kuo Chou (rounds) said it this way at lunch today,
"Every day I'm afraid I wont get enough to eat. And every day I manage to eat my fill. There's never been a day when I went hungry. And yet I go on false thinking about it. Really stupid!"