oct - nov 2006 wat pathailuampon, thailand
"Sometimes I see something so moving I know i'm not supposed to linger. See it and leave. If you stay too long you wear out the wordless shock. Love it and trust it and leave."
Sometimes you do something just because a voice tells you you should do it. I decided it was time to go back into the jungle even though the jungle is my least favourite environment, to go back into the Thai monastic setting even though the total language barrier is exhausting and stressful. Something told me it may be a little different this time, but still, I was expecting it to be tough.
And then others start helping. In a small apartment in Osaka a friend covers a wooden go counter in a heap of incense. In the garden of el balcon another friend makes a beautiful confucian writing table, varnished and gold painted, to take with me into the kuti. Other friends write and say hello, good luck. Others think of writing, an accidental sweetness that floats in unexpectedly during a quiet moment at work or on the bus. I dont know where things come from, or what depends on what, so I just appreciate them. Walking barefoot through the village at sunrise begging for food, suddenly a beautiful wind blows and there is only the wind. The sweetest thai pop songs drift out of the farmhouses, unrepeatable and beyond naming. And at night, amazing dreams: the whole world 'almost nothing'.
A tiny village temple. Sometimes just me and the abbot. Sometimes one other monk. But they leave me entirely alone (a go counter covered in incense...) and so for the first time the language barrier, though still exhausting, doesnt demoralise me. The abbot is a gruff, down to earth but kind-hearted man. When he talks (and its more like shouting) I cant tell if he's talking to me, the cats, the chickens or the tv. He virtually lives on the buddha platform next to the statues, with his bed-roll and fan and spittoon and tv. He's old and infirm and it seems like he's just quietly, calmly waiting to die. When his mobile phone rings it plays 'happy birthday'. And its true: your next birthday may be only a few seconds away.
There were times when I thought "if, on my deathbed, I can remember this feeling of walking through the village begging for food, trusting and being supported, I will be ok. Death wont entangle me. I will make it safely through the bardo realm." Everyone is going to need 2 or 3 memories like this for when they die. Some action that combines ritual and abandon, that touches your deepest beliefs and also makes you smile. When you're dying you probably wont have the stability of mind to do focussed spiritual practices, but you will hopefully be able to remember and surrender. It may just be enough.
For three weeks I study only the Diamond Sutra, meditating on quotations from 53 zen commentaries, but after that its time to mix it up, soft logic style: chapter 18 of Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika mixed with essays on film editing and Murakami microworlds; a wonderful children's trilogy ("HIs Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman) packed with witches and scientists, dead souls and angels, parallel worlds and quantum physics and the I Ching, opened up to Dogen Zenji's Fukanzazengi and Tibetan cosmologies; reading essays on Dante and thinking about the Shikoku pilgrimage.
Dorothea Lange: "a camera is an instrument for teaching how to see without a camera." I think the same can be said of Buddhism. It is a religion that teaches how to live without religion, an exquisite piece of technology designed to disappear after setting you free, a therapeutic construct whose only aim is to free us from the entanglements of hallucinated suffering constructs. Neither an object nor a territory, Buddhism is simply a name given to the appeasement of obsessions. Your Buddhist universe begins the moment you see things as impermanent, as conditioned things totally dependent on other conditioned things, and as acts of kindness. And since everything can be seen in these (dissolving, disappearing, kindly) ways - the new testament, nanotechnology, beer in the fridge - anything can be in your Buddhist universe.
And so, every few days, I check up on myself, on the state of my Buddhist universe, using the six flavours of emptiness. I ask myself, as I'm drifting off to sleep in my kuti, "have I been fooled recently by impermanence, by thinking something in my life was permanent when of course it wasnt? ... have i been fooled by the myth of ownership and control? ... by mistaking my personal constructs for objective reality? ..." And so on. Its a great way to drift off to sleep.
I'm writing this in Laos on another visa run. A cheque has just gone into a friend's account in London. A door has just opened into Korea. Murakami: "when you have to choose between something which has form and something which is formless, choose the one without form." Do I winter in Thailand (bucket showers at the temple well in the late afternoon sun)? Or Korea (snowy days, wearing my woollen hat with the Dalai Lama's name inside)? Which one is the one without form?
I'll stop here. Lots of emails to catch up on. Forgive me if I just read them and smile, leaving some of them in that space beyond naming. I'll reply to as many as I can.
with best wishes to everyone,
shenyen
Sometimes you do something just because a voice tells you you should do it. I decided it was time to go back into the jungle even though the jungle is my least favourite environment, to go back into the Thai monastic setting even though the total language barrier is exhausting and stressful. Something told me it may be a little different this time, but still, I was expecting it to be tough.
And then others start helping. In a small apartment in Osaka a friend covers a wooden go counter in a heap of incense. In the garden of el balcon another friend makes a beautiful confucian writing table, varnished and gold painted, to take with me into the kuti. Other friends write and say hello, good luck. Others think of writing, an accidental sweetness that floats in unexpectedly during a quiet moment at work or on the bus. I dont know where things come from, or what depends on what, so I just appreciate them. Walking barefoot through the village at sunrise begging for food, suddenly a beautiful wind blows and there is only the wind. The sweetest thai pop songs drift out of the farmhouses, unrepeatable and beyond naming. And at night, amazing dreams: the whole world 'almost nothing'.
A tiny village temple. Sometimes just me and the abbot. Sometimes one other monk. But they leave me entirely alone (a go counter covered in incense...) and so for the first time the language barrier, though still exhausting, doesnt demoralise me. The abbot is a gruff, down to earth but kind-hearted man. When he talks (and its more like shouting) I cant tell if he's talking to me, the cats, the chickens or the tv. He virtually lives on the buddha platform next to the statues, with his bed-roll and fan and spittoon and tv. He's old and infirm and it seems like he's just quietly, calmly waiting to die. When his mobile phone rings it plays 'happy birthday'. And its true: your next birthday may be only a few seconds away.
There were times when I thought "if, on my deathbed, I can remember this feeling of walking through the village begging for food, trusting and being supported, I will be ok. Death wont entangle me. I will make it safely through the bardo realm." Everyone is going to need 2 or 3 memories like this for when they die. Some action that combines ritual and abandon, that touches your deepest beliefs and also makes you smile. When you're dying you probably wont have the stability of mind to do focussed spiritual practices, but you will hopefully be able to remember and surrender. It may just be enough.
For three weeks I study only the Diamond Sutra, meditating on quotations from 53 zen commentaries, but after that its time to mix it up, soft logic style: chapter 18 of Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika mixed with essays on film editing and Murakami microworlds; a wonderful children's trilogy ("HIs Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman) packed with witches and scientists, dead souls and angels, parallel worlds and quantum physics and the I Ching, opened up to Dogen Zenji's Fukanzazengi and Tibetan cosmologies; reading essays on Dante and thinking about the Shikoku pilgrimage.
Dorothea Lange: "a camera is an instrument for teaching how to see without a camera." I think the same can be said of Buddhism. It is a religion that teaches how to live without religion, an exquisite piece of technology designed to disappear after setting you free, a therapeutic construct whose only aim is to free us from the entanglements of hallucinated suffering constructs. Neither an object nor a territory, Buddhism is simply a name given to the appeasement of obsessions. Your Buddhist universe begins the moment you see things as impermanent, as conditioned things totally dependent on other conditioned things, and as acts of kindness. And since everything can be seen in these (dissolving, disappearing, kindly) ways - the new testament, nanotechnology, beer in the fridge - anything can be in your Buddhist universe.
And so, every few days, I check up on myself, on the state of my Buddhist universe, using the six flavours of emptiness. I ask myself, as I'm drifting off to sleep in my kuti, "have I been fooled recently by impermanence, by thinking something in my life was permanent when of course it wasnt? ... have i been fooled by the myth of ownership and control? ... by mistaking my personal constructs for objective reality? ..." And so on. Its a great way to drift off to sleep.
I'm writing this in Laos on another visa run. A cheque has just gone into a friend's account in London. A door has just opened into Korea. Murakami: "when you have to choose between something which has form and something which is formless, choose the one without form." Do I winter in Thailand (bucket showers at the temple well in the late afternoon sun)? Or Korea (snowy days, wearing my woollen hat with the Dalai Lama's name inside)? Which one is the one without form?
I'll stop here. Lots of emails to catch up on. Forgive me if I just read them and smile, leaving some of them in that space beyond naming. I'll reply to as many as I can.
with best wishes to everyone,
shenyen
posted by . . . at 3:00 AM
1 Comments:
"Your Buddhist universe begins the moment you see things as impermanent, as conditioned things totally dependent on other conditioned things, and as acts of kindness."
wisdom and
compassion--
nothing exists and
everything proves it.
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