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Heng Sure
March 26, 1978
CACTUS PRACTICE
Prickly pear. Across the fence in the low pasture, the first we've seen. Then another, a hundred yards on. A cactus with an unfriendly appearance but a personality like a bodhisattva, benefiting people in a hundreds ways. A drugstore in the desert. Cultivation works the same way. From the outside it looks like suffering. Those who walk the Bodhisattva Way taste its sweet rewards.
Getting in the fire. The needles turn to singe the fruits in the fire. The needless turn to smoke and disappear. The tough purple skin softness up and opens, revealing flavorful goodness. Indians and early pioneers are cactus fruit raw or boiled, stewed or dried. The seeds make flour, the juice makes a sweet syrup. Mexicans eat cactus pickles, use the fleshly cactus pads as a poultice to bind wounds and bruises, and add cactus sap to mortar and whitewash so it sticks better to adobe walls.
Bodhisattvas pass through the fires of self-discipline and lose the spines of false thoughts, bad habits, and attachments. Cultivation opens and softens stubborn minds to reveal the infinite potential for wisdom within. Enlightened beings benefit all creatures impartially, with no thoughts for fame or personal gain, just like the cactus. Bodhisattvas are like oases in the desert of birth and death, manifesting countless skilful means to end suffering and give joy.
But walking the way looks as thorny as a prickly pear. An artful evangelist from another religion argued this morning,
"You're ruining your body. Don't your hands and knees want to quit? Why torture yourself like this? Surely your Buddha or whoever you worship doesn't want you to suffer so. You shouldn't punish yourself any longer. It's too hard, to much bitterness."
I remembered what an old Ch'an Master said, "People in the world chase the objects of desire and mistake suffering for bliss. Cultivators want to endure suffering and attain genuine, lasting bliss. So they cheat themselves a bit, take a loss in the world, cultivate bitter practices, and every thought, word, and deed, work to benefit the whole world with no thought for themselves. When you're enlightened, everything before seems just like a dream. Now we're all dreaming but don't know it."
As the persuasive missionary talked away, I looked to the cactus in the pasture and heard the monk's words. We cultivate cactus practice. Once past the spines, there's nourishment and goodness for all.
"I will follow and learn from Vairochana as he cultivated all kinds of bitter ascetice practices." Avatamsaka sutra, "Chapter 40"
Heng Ch'au
Sunday
March 26, 1978
Bowed over Arroya de la Cruz Creek. The next gas and water is ragged point, about a week away. San Francisco is 202 miles north. Narrow, dangerous road ahead. Feeling humbled and happy. Good bowing hurts a little, not so much the body as the mind. The hardest thing to face out here is the truth "there is no me." Even when you know all your problems and suffering come from a big view of self, the fear of losing the self mounts stiff resistance.
What a strange dilemmas: if there is no self, what is there to let go of? How can you lose what never existed in the first place? All dharmas are like this.
"If the Bodhisattva is able to be united from all dharmas, then he is also not liberated from all dharmas. Why? There is not the slightest dharmas Which can be attached to." -- Avatamsaka sutra
The sun set, we finished bowing and walked in silence down the empty road as the fog rolled in. "where is the self I'm trying to bow away?" I asked. I had no answer and that felt honest. Honest and confused is better than being cocksure and phoney.
"How do you deal with the physical danger?" asks Kuo Chou.
"With singleminded bowing. That's all we've got. We bow a mile per day. We vowed to not fight or defend ourselves. We carry no weapons and at night camp on the side of the road completely exposed and vulnerable. We have learned our only safety and protection is holding the precepts outside, and keeping a very gentle heart inside."
"He vows that all beings obtain a mind of proper concentration and be- come unable to be harmed but all sorts of conditions." -- Avatamsaka sutra
We got a Coleman stove as an offering. Welcome addition. We've been cooking with a little Svea back-packing stove about the size of a high school chemistry-lab Bunsen burner. It was 50% effective. The other ½ of the time we ate cold canned food, peanut butter and cereal.
We are leaning to appreciate the conveniences and outright luxuries we took for granted all our lives-like running water, a roof to keep the rain out, a floor above the cold ground an d bugs, warm clothes, healthy bodies, and a stove to cook on. We don't miss TV, radio, newspapers, movies, coke, rush hour, a time clock, and vacation. Our work is our vacation in the true sense of the word, "to be empty."
But it takes work to truly be empty. True emptiness is non-attachment. One who is empty never gets angry or afflicted no matter what happens. He seeks nothing. Does he just withdraw then and renounce the world? No. it is just because he has putdown all worldly things that he is able to greatly benefit all that lives. Non-attachment isn't nothing, it is n o selfishness.
"He never discriminates among living beings, Nor does he false think about dharmas. Although he is not defiled by attach- ment to the mundane world, At the same time, he does not abandon Living beings." -- Avatamsaka sutra
Taking no delight in worldly affairs and forgetting himself for the sake of others is a bodhisattva's contribution to the world. He is a cool pool, an oasis in the desert, a reflection of our original face.
Did laundry at an all night Laundromat in Cambria. Took turns shaving heads and bathing out of the bathroom sink. Hot water from the tap is a rare find in the highway filling-station circuit.