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Journals: HENG SURE: June 4, 1977 - This is the last bow of the first day of the rest of your life. No…uh, that’s…this is the first bow of the only day to last the rest of your life. Today after lunch I felt totally here for the first time. It has always taken me time to adjust when traveling. Very slow, like mud, it takes a while, but today I arrived. Felt all here and relaxed, ready to go to work. The trip has really begun and tomorrow the Abbot comes to start us all over again. There is a constant low-key fear in our bodies. We can function, our minds would stay loose, but deep in the spinal muscles, in Heng Ch’au’s shoulders and in Heng Sure’s guts there is tension. Actually it’s all in the mind, natch, but it shows up in the deep parts. On one hand you could call it really dull and uneventful, slight fuzzy, occasionally impure, occasionally clear and tranquil. On the other hand you could call it the mellow, even, state of mind of a Gold Mountain cultivator. Not many hassles, not many highs. The frequency range, if I were a radio goes from 850 to 920, highest in the early AM, just before lunch, and past 4 PM. Lowest just after lunch and from 3 to 4 PM and just before bed. Someone who looks for thrills and space-outs would probably feel unsatisfied. It’s too constant, back-burner on medium heat day and night and day. Something in that pot will be cooled though, by and by, sure as sure can be. The job now is to keep the kitchen clean, watch the post, adjust the flame, tend the fire, thank the cook, and patiently wait. I can see the beach for the first time. Nearing the end of the trip’s first leg. Fought a bout with fear this morning during the first hour. A test to try to move me using my old weak bowels habit. I got the boiling guts urge all of a sudden and it was hot and fearful. I was full of fears--the streets threatened this and that…I was ready for it and recognized it as a state, a test, because I had been feeling fine up to that time. I wanted to bow more than I wanted to find a bathroom. So after struggling inside to overcome the fear with logic and reason, blank-outs, and low-energy coercion, I gave up and yielded. I said, “I don’t care what guts full of acid, I kept on bowing. After making this resolve, my wandering eyes found my nose and rested there, concentrating. Suddenly it all changed. My whole state fell into order. The test was over. My breath caught up and returned, my shoulders relaxed, my energy fell to where it should be. Everything relaxed, straightened, and breathed. Control your eyes. Bow! HENG CH’AU: June 4, 1977 - Liberated two tiny frogs trapped in an empty casting pool in the park this AM while we were doing t’ai chi. Heng Sure gave them the refuge ceremony and away they hopped, with the hope that they will come back as Bodhisattvas and cross over countless living being. We were going to Gold Wheel this AM. End of Wilshire. HENG CH’AU: June 5, 1977 - Slept as Gold Wheel last night and cleaned up. Really dirty. So good to see Shih Fu and the Sangha again. Family. Returning the Light Within Received some criticism about sense of superiority and lack of humility in our letters. In looking over the last month’s essays and entries in my heart I find some truth in that. It’s too easy for me to float away, leave the ground. This helps to see things as empty and break attachments but hinders compassion and humility which I equally feel--the need to cultivate. The aloofness is partly to defend and stay on guard to dangerous people and situations and partly because the very act of slowly bowing and meditating in the midst of mundane activity we easily settle into a kind of invisibility and separateness, but there’s more to it than that. The criticism of things I’ve seen was coming from an awakening perspective that there is an alternative, another way to deal with suffering, freedom, and birth and death. That alternative is within and Buddhism offers another way to discover it. I dwelled upon criticism and didn’t say enough about the compassion, giving, and kindness I’ve seen. So what I recorded became lopsided and critical. Yet underneath and through all this I was hurting and feeling the suffering within all these places and of all these people. It was from a wish to end my own and other’s suffering that I came to Buddhism. Perhaps that doesn’t come across because I stiffen and distance my heart from the inconceivable agony of what I see and feel. The hardness and intolerance with which I look at and criticize myself, my weaknesses, laziness, and stupidity lacks humor, especially self-humor. It also is cold and looks at the negative a lot. If I am not that way I have found I can easily slither out of changing my bad habits, let myself off the hook too easily and end up repeating mistakes. My ego is strong and keeps finding new guises and ways to show its ugly face. I have to keep on it constantly. All of this is to say that I often end up generalizing this hardness and distancing to others which can come across as superiority, lack of humility, and arrogance. To stop my own suffering and afflictions I need to be relentless, uncompromising, critical, and impersonal, I have discovered. Since I am so easily and deeply empathetic with others, I have talked about and written about their lives and problems from that stance and perspective. But now that it’s been pointed out to me, I realize that 1) maybe I don’t really know what they are going through or are like 2) to be hard on yourself is ok but don’t lay that on others unless they want it. You chose it, let others choose, too. 3) other people may learn and change and grow differently than me-more easily. Mine is surely an extraordinarily large ego to contend with. 4) I’m hard on myself because I too easily indulge and feel sorry for myself. Sink into the Pices blues, wallow. I need to be kicked, prodded, own. What I share with others really is the struggle and desire to end suffering, be joyous and light and truly enlightened and peaceful. It’s this which I ought to project rather than my faults and ways of contending with my “self.” Summarize: Be hard on yourself; compassionate and soft in criticism of others. Emphasize the light, the positive, the proper. Make bridges, alternatives to greed, hatred, and stupidity. You are not a teacher. If you were an enlightened teacher and these people were your disciples then scolding, prodding, severe criticism, etc. has a place but I don’t know anything of that. Most important, don’t be arrogant, forgetting that you are able to see and know only because you yourself have just recently begun to “reverse” it and only because you receive countless others’ patience, compassion, and teaching. This is being Bodhisattva--to truly help others, to repay your parents and teachers (numberless), to transform and cross over with empathy. Don’t be distant and pull away from it. Doing that is just small vehicle--“save myself--everyone for himself.” I resolve to eliminate all arrogance and “self” from body, mouth, and mind and writing and replace them with compassion and gratitude…
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