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Journals: HENG SURE: June 2, 1977 - More on the song. When you work with the mind, the mind becomes sensitized to input, to the environment, to ideas and subtle shadings, nuances. The difference between affliction and Bodhi is as thin as a reed. By singing a non-Dharma song yesterday I trashed the sensitive mirror of my thoughts and planted the stupid, mundane lyrics and tune of the song in my head for a long time. I’ll be hearing the song long after I should have been enlightened. It’s like bowing hard to polish a crystal tray, getting every bit of dust off it and then turning around and dumping the morning sweepings of garbage and dust on it. How silly! All the day’s work wasted! Another way to view the mistake of singing after cultivating silence is like a mountain climber who slips off the trail, falls a few feet and bruises his ankle. It will take a while for the bruise to heal, it makes walking all the harder and I must be really careful to avoid taking a big fall and doing real damage. Dumb! The Bodhisattva goes where others cannot go to complete his work of bringing the Dharma to the world. Bowing beneath the San Diego freeway is such a place. Toxic, foul, evil, uninhabitable, foreign to the planet, the underpass and the roads that feed it were made by human hands and strength, but did they know that in the future, the space they created would be destructive to human life? Heng Chau and I did not have the protective armor of an automobile when we dared to traverse the area. As we bowed through the thunder and poison of the exhausts from thousands of buses and trucks, we lost our breath, lost our minds, our hearing, our sight, our sanity. White faces, short of breath and fading, if we had to stay there for one hour instead of twenty minutes, we would have collapsed and died of the poisonous vapors. So congratulations, modern people. We have made our cave truly uninhabitable. Only this time we can’t leave it and go further West. We’re stuck with it. Unless your thoughts get really daring: say, use fewer cars? We do not bow across intersection. We pace across, counting the steps, with hands in “palms together” position, to bow the right number of bows on the far corner. Walking slowly, mindfully with palms together startles the motorists we cross in front of. On lady, however, picked up on the purpose of palms together crossing of streets right away. At the busy Gayley and Wilshire intersection I crossed with palms together, slowly pacing and counting the steps. When I reached the other curb, the hour was over so I made a half-bow, mentally marked the spot and the number of bows to do and turned around to look for a drinking fountain. I met the smiling face of a 40ist woman who happily said, “See, you made it, safe and sounds.” HENG CH’AU: June 2, 1977 - In the last two weeks or so some drastic and powerful things have been going on inside. At first I noticed my t’ai chi was much stronger, like every pore and corner of my body was charged with almost too much juice to contain. Then I went through a couple of days where sexual desire was running wild. I felt like fifteen or sixteen years old. Every sight and sound was a potential threat. Even though I could see what was happening the pulsing yearning was still hard to control because so much came so fast and I felt it hormonally, like an animal instinct. Finally I got some leverage on this runaway energy. In the last week my sitting meditation is more concentrated; less distracted. When I sit and fix on the tip of my nose a wave of warmth spreads from my waist and hips (inside though) up my spine and throughout my body. Any pain or discomfort disappears. I feel light and at ease, aglow. Regardless of how cold or hot it is I feel comfortable in light clothes. After sitting I feel as if I had just taken a hot bath--refreshed but not hot or heavy or dull. This morning waves of anger and edginess hit. I was really irritable, almost like pre-flu skin sensitivity, only emotionally as well. Patience, patience, got to have patience, don’t get angry, Swo pe he. This low follows an incredible high energy peak last night where I literally felt like I was nine years old again—boundless light energy without afflictions of sexual desire, adult worries, cares, and attachments. Just got to hang on and let it go where it goes. Don’t be moved. The only thing true is hard work and patience. Where does the energy outflow go? Waiting patiently waiting for the slow kiln inside to transmute this new energy. To woman and pastry shops it goes, checking out the sugarland. To anger and short temper (hurry up kiln I am about to explode). Cross it over, don’t spill it. Patiently sweating it out at a foundry in the oven! We both feel like we are smelting a pure substance in a super hot furnace in a small room--all around the furnace are open barrels of gun powder. One mistake, broken rule, too serious a slip and boom! Three straight days of diarrhea and hot pavement, bad smog and more Jesus converters. (The one this A.M. kept shoving his crucifix into our face “See this, see this?”) All little tests it seems. Now we are in Santa Monica nearer the beach. “Really nice there…smooth sailing.” And yet we are both just fine. Nothing to be happy about or sad about either. No reason to get angry or impatient. No cause for doubts or enthusiasm. Three steps, one bow. Through the picket line of construction workers, three steps, one bow, three steps, one bow. Orange Juice Bomb We usually eat promptly at 11:30 A.M., but for some reason today we decided to eat later and instead use the time to contact the Santa Monica police and let them know about three steps, one bow. We pulled into the police parking lot, got out, and closed the door. As the door closed…Boom! There was an explosion and I saw the curtains shake. We looked inside. Orange juice was dripping and running all over and the half gallon glass bottle it came in was scattered about the van in jagged hunks and splinters. The bottle was in a box we always set right between us when eating and the time of the explosion? We looked at Heng Sure’s watch. 11:32 A.M. The force of the explosion and the glass projectiles would have left two bloody bhishus or taken something more serious like an eye or major artery. Tonight our Verse of Admonishment will have a special reality to it: The day has already passed, life is shorter. Like fish in an evaporating pond what joy is there in this? Great assembly: take heed, be vigorous. As if your head depended on it. Be mindful of impermanence and never lax for an instant. The Flies Get in During certain weeks of the hot, muggy dog-days of summer in Wisconsin the flies and mosquitoes get pretty thick. Screen doors and windows are essential. But they are useless if left open. Running in and out all day and night, we kids were pretty thoughtless of cause of effect and so always left the door and windows open. My mother would yell, “Close the door behind you or the flies will get in.” We never listened. At night harassed by all manner of bugs and sometimes bats, we would holler and cry. All my mother would say is “Not much good closing the barn door after the horse is gone.” Yesterday afternoon I couldn’t seem to keep my doors closed. All my energy and concentration was going out mostly at one particular gigantic billboard with an attractive woman serving a cool drink. This is what’s known as outflows (letting your light leek out, moving away from the Buddha nature within). So I said, “You got to stop this. For this next hour all you are going to look t is the back of Heng Sure’s shoes. This is it. Plug your leek. Shut the door.” I was good for awhile and then without even noticing caught myself looking at the billboard again. Right at that moment a car pulled alongside with one of the meanest, baddest men in it I’ve run across. He was carved and tattooed on his face and sneering a sick smile. The door left open, the flies were in. My stomach tried to hide and right then I understood the principle my mother tried to get across: what you create you must endure; leave your doors open and you are vulnerable to the outside. Live by the Way and there’s no hole for death to enter. HENG SURE: June 3, 1977 Heng Ch’au: “A year.” Upasika: “Only a year?” Heng Ch’au: “Time time.” Upasika: “You were with him before?” Heng Ch’au: “Sure. Lots. Weren’t you? If I were really smart I wouldn’t have come back this time, because I never would have left.” Upasika: “When I first came to Gold Mountain years ago with my mother, I wasn’t too impressed, you know. Excuse me for saying this, but it was so dark and there were all those American people and I didn’t even see Shih Fu. My mother just went in, bowed to the Buddhas and jetted back out of there.” Heng Ch’au: “You know the saying, ‘False outside, true inside’.” Upasika: “Right. So why won’t the Shih Fu advertise? He’s such a great man, you know, and yet he’s always telling us not to talk about him. How come so few people know about Gold Mountain?” Heng Ch’au: “Basically it’s not Buddhism to talk about personalities. If it were advertised like that then everyone would come expecting to be entertained--climbing on conditions--like going to a movie. In Buddhism you have to really cultivate. ‘You yourself must walk the path, the Buddhas only show the way’.” Upasika: “Well nobody will ever find it then.” Heng Ch’au: “You did. Besides, when you’ve got the real thing, you don’t have to advertise it. The people who really recognize you will come anyway. It’s just a matter of time. We’ve only begun Buddhism--the true Dharma--here in the West. But it’s going to be here in this land for centuries. We’ve got to start slowly and surely. Upasika: “How come you are eating so little?” Heng Ch’au: “It’s funny, but I want to eat less because I want to bow more.” Upsika: “But if you don’t eat enough then you can’t bow at all.” Heng Ch’au: “So the answer is to eat just enough and bow just enough.” I see clearly that once you begin to cultivate and really do it, the only thing that can sustain you, actually save you, is continued vigorous cultivation. As soon as you let down or relax, all the energy you have built up can go the wrong way. In the mornings I have to struggle to keep ahead of my new energy. It wants to go the wrong way already. It is potent, hard to resist, and requires a total dedication of will and then constant, mindful effort to keep it from flowing out the old channels. That would be a total loss, a tragedy, a waster, and a situation of real danger. I just wish that my old habits were not so strongly burned in, and I wish that I hadn’t shortened my life-span and taken the deviant for the proper for so long. How can I avoid it in the future? I vowed to cut it off in this life and in all future lives. That will have to cover my early, forgetful years when the bad habits begin. It must work! This is too wrong! The good-timers breakfast club in the Country Chicken Café in Santa Monica called the police on Heng Sure at 7:25 Friday morning-told the police that there was a crazy loose who was trying to climb buildings on Wilshire Boulevard. They were disappointed when Officer Kaiser, and three squad cars arrived, found everything in order, read his transit papers, said good morning, and left. On The Edge Feeling grouchy and irritable. “Don’t touch me!” “What do you mean, ‘get off the sidewalk’?” It’s the old/new energy rising and Heng Ch’au and I have to be alert every minute to keep it intact. We hope that we don’t explode and waste it before it goes where it is supposed to. Got to keep the work up but not more than we can absorb or else it’s start-over-again time. When we feel like this, the streets are an affliction griddle--the roaring metal river is gritting, broiling to head and hands, long and blinding, smoky with exhaust, fumes, dazzling with reflected sun, and noisy with whistlers, honks, cat-calls, stares. I remind myself that no one put me here but me myself. All I have to do is stand up and walk away and I can have all the sense pleasures there are in the world, without having to leave my own condominium pool. Don’t be such a sap. The worst part is doing the form right and then losing your concentration for one instant when a woman walks near you and you feel your energy change involuntarily. You feel cheated, betrayed, robbed of all your treasures. Oh, my, no, the Dharma is not easy to master. Not at all. Patience is number one. Compassion, and vows to take them all across. If thee were no self, who would there be to get angry? Just grow up and work hard. The Mysterious Exploding Orange Juice The layperson brought two half gallons of Vita-Pakt orange juice (from concentrate, no sugar added) for lunch “This should hold you until Friday,” she said. “Forget that one bottle. It’s fermented already.” (Orange juice? Fermenting?) I took up the bottle, shook it, and it gushed up all over my arm like orange soda on a hot day. Son of a gun, carbonated orange juice. Well, it didn’t start out that way. What makes it fizz? I wondered. Innocently I capped the bottle and set it back in the box intending to give it to the layperson to take back for a refund. The next afternoon we took the usual lunch hour and visited the Santa Monica police to report in and check out. As we got out of the van at 11:30 when we normally eat, there was a “punt” “tinkle” sound and the side curtains were suddenly wet. And orange. Heng Ch’au had not even taken the key from the door he was locking, so we opened the van to discover the force of the gaseous orange juice had shattered the heavy glass half gallon container and had sent shards and missiles of glass and spits of orange juice all over the rear of the car. Had e eaten at the usual time we would have been picking glass from our eyes for days.
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