Student Striver 4
Countdown From Ecstasy
by Zheng Dao (Fogueira)...And thine eternal summer shall not fade. -- Shakespeare
Last time I was here, I talked about beginning students' difficulties in knowing what a good teacher is and avoiding bad ones. Maybe I felt lucky or something, but the very next day I happened to run into my teacher, at least my first "official" heart Dharma brother, in classic fashion. When the student is ready, the cliché mongers say, the teacher appears. Many are called, but few show up.
I thought it would be a good idea to pass on a few things I already knew forever that he taught me for the first time last week. That is thing #1: how you know the guy has got his stuff. (I don't know why the women of Zen appear to get less publicity than their male counterparts. That's a subject for my next piece.) The guy makes you aware that you already knew--but didn't know you knew.
Bro taught me five easy realizations.
The first thing he taught me was:
(1) It's gonna come!
Master Sheng-yen and the other Chan big boys call this the Great Faith. This is why we're all here. We know in the pits of our stomachs and the depths of our hearts that there is something out there that will straighten everything out and give our lives something called meaning. And we sit and sit in Zazen, and nothing happens. Or we read and read, and nothing happens. Or we live our lives but we're not aware that we're living them and nothing happens.
Rest assured, boys and girls, esteemed colleagues and hangers-on: it IS, and it will come. It will be manifested in such a way that you will know, incontrovertibly, absolutely, and for all time. I don't know when, and I don't know how, and it may take ten thousand years, but it will dance into every last one of your waiting lives, as long as you know how to wait and that it is worth waiting for.
But....
(2) When it does make itself known -- accept the form it rode in on.
The thing we want the most on this earth is a connection, which Master Stevie Ray Vaughan called soul to soul.
We don't exactly know what that is, but we know it exists, in the aforementioned stomach gurgling and the uncertain heartbeats that we barely acknowledge.
It would be awfully nice if one or both of your parents had a clue about your inner being -- just occasionally. There would be no more of those self-esteem problems, no disastrous career stagnations, no moving back home at the age of 40, because you would be secure enough in your own essence, accepted at all times and places by these parents, to do the right thing. All those ethical family values that unethical people like to scream about you'd have down pat. Anything you did would be acceptable, but paradoxically your parents would be a model to make sure you didn't do anything not, like running up credit card debt visiting one psychiatrist after another in fruitless search for an explanation of why everything went wrong every which way but inside your own mind.
But such is all too frequently not the case.
It would be awfully nice if your lover or spouse conformed more than once in a blue moon to the major universal cultural belief in soulmateness, don't you think?
But such is all too frequently not the case.
Or even if it is, the great light of heart connection is all too frequently obscured by what we Buddhists call suffering - the cravings, illusions and delusions of daily life which get in the way. Those times when we expect something less or more than the moment's truth from anyone, or their expecting more from us than what our true natures can offer.
It would be awfully nice if you were to get it from the colleague. It's been done before. Could be Hart; could be Hammerstein.
But again, it could be the network guy. Nobody knows, but it could happen at any time. Be ready. Empty your mind and prep your heart. Keep your soul cool and banked down.
(3) "Dharma transmission" is real.
All those who have practiced for years going on more years have probably forgotten how depressing and frustrating it was to be a beginner, and particularly in Zen/Chan, the branch of Buddhism that created Sudden Enlightenment and Mind to Mind transmission in the first place. Your brain was awash in exotic sounding words and inarticulate sounds, which were supposed to push you over the edge into some mysterious awakening beyond them and it. The more you MU-ed, the less you moved. The more you heard the Master cry "Katz!" the more it stubbornly remained the name of your orthodontist and not the realization of the Great Way.
What they forgot to tell the beginner is that it has to be conveyed to you in your own heart's language.
And that, my friends, is the definition of a Master: the individual who has the knowledge and the means to convey the truth you have eternally known to you in a language your essence understands.
It does -- just as the boys have told from Shakyamuni to Hui Neng on down, happen instantaneously, from heart level to heart level. Of course, it is your own heart beating which you have truly heard for the first time.
(4) The lineage is confirmed.
That means, the moment after it happens, every hunch you ever had, every Zen book you ever read, every moment of beyond all everything wonderfulness is shown to be the truth, whole and nothing but. Mu will be confirmed in its mu-ness and Katz in all his resplendent orthodontism.
(5) There is no master and no disciple.
Only the Way remains. By reflecting your essence back to you -- not for nothing are there all those seemingly incomprehensible stories about polishing mirrors and Buddha-- the Master acknowledges who you truly are. Your being beyond all thought. As mine said to me, neither before nor behind, not above or below. Floating in total equilibrium, one bubble shining in the sun, bouncing next to all the others, of equal weight and worth, without tension.
What is this Way? Love.
Otherwise known as the complete acceptance of a being's essence with reflexive grace. You are precious -- not more than any other, but at the same time uniquely, wonderfully.
In this cherished uniqueness, all differences caused by judgments and labels disappear, and all that is left to do is to encyst the Master's teachings in you and carry them forward. Master Jesus of Nazareth observed that we were the Way.
Knowing the Way -- instantaneous and eternal.
Walking the Way -- a whole different matter, and not barely halfway done until every last sentient being's heart confirms its own light.
That's the hard part.