Adventures with the Lotus Sutra (1)

A night away from Larry’s Bar

occasioned by a shooting star

  Countless intriguing and inspiring moments have accumulated over the past forty years practicing the teachings of the Buddha with The Threefold Lotus Sutra, right up to the present day. In a way, I suppose they explain why the practice has become more focused and rewarding over the years, and why today the thought of beginning each day without celebrating the Buddha’s life and teachings in the Lotus Sutra is unthinkable. Here’s one adventure that might amuse you. . . March 23, 1978.

  Opting to return home alone from the Encore movie theatre on Melrose Avenue, choosing not to follow the usual routine slinging down a few (or several) beers at Larry’s Bar across the street to score a hook-up.

  Home is an apartment in a ghoul­ish 1920s building where Valentino once resided (the owner succeeded in getting the street renamed, “Valen­tino Place”). It’s close to Paramount Studio’s main gate through which Norma Desmond/Gloria Swanson makes her grand entrance in “Sunset Boulevard.”

  After kneeling in front of the Mandala (Gohonzon), briefly chanting a few “devotions to the Lotus Sutra,” Nam Myoho Renge kyo, I head up the winding staircase with its iron-wrought railing leading to a second floor dormer. Time now for some “Moon  viewing.” Knowing the Moon is bright and close to full (a “gibbous Moon”), I gaze at it through a high dormer window.

  The Moon is bright in a clear night sky. Suddenly a shooting star crosses to the right of the Moon! It’s 10:35:04, calling my attention, in the astrological scheme of things, to the symbol in Rudhyar’s Mandala for the Moon’s position, 29° Virgo:

  Individuals seeking occult knowledge are reading an ancient scroll which illumines their minds. Realigning one’s self. Rudhyar:  In occultism the “Pattern of Humankind” is an arche­typical Power that may be contacted. It must be sought out with undeviat­ing determination to “reach the other shore.”

So much for beer slinging this night—back to chanting in front of the “ancient scroll”!

  This doesn’t mean I never returned to Larry’s—it was right across the street after all, but the message was clear for this night at least, that I should spend time celebrating with the Buddha and the “ancient scroll,” and to think if I had gone to Larry’s, I would not have seen the shooting star! (Should mention that at the time I had been commissioned to novelize a screenplay, close to  completion.)

Mind – Fundamental Principle of Nature

Excerpt from article, from NY Times Science:

  Dr. Nagel "proposes [this] might require another revolution: showing that mind, along with matter and energy, is a fundamental principle of nature – and that we live in a universe primed to generate beings capable of comprehending it." Rather than being a blind series of random mutations and adaptations, evolution would have a direction, maybe even a purpose."

Stories from the Threefold Lotus Sutra – Preface, "Celebrating Life" (by DFS):

  In the moment of his enlightenment, the Buddha is awakened to the profound interconnection of all living things. He perceives that an imperishable energy, a uni­versal life-force, is the cause of all existence, imbedded in all laws. From emptiness, the profound Law of the Void, itself the Great Perfection, he realizes and all living things, are equal in the fundamental value of their existence and are caused to live by the will to live, brought into being by virtue of karmic necessity, evolving creatively with planet earth

* * * * *  Five Star pages from notes – 2005  * * * * * (unedited)

(Ken Wilber) all boundaries and dualisms have been transcended and all individuality dissolves into universal, undifferentiated oneness. Identities associated with all levels of consciousness are illusory – except for the ultimate level of mind where one finds one’s supreme identity.

  (Niwano, Lotus Sutra) – now in this chapter (16) the truth is clearly revealed . . . beyond doubt that the ultimate substance of the Buddha is the everlasting life-force of the universe, none other than the eternal Buddha.

  Shakyamuni taught that all visible or apparent forms in the world are but temporary appearances brought into being by combinations of causes and conditions. If these causes and conditions did not exist, neither would their visible forms; different causes and conditions would produce other visible forms.

  The ultimate substance of the Buddha is the eternal imperishable life-force; the Buddha abounds within and about us all.

We ourselves are one substance with the Buddha.

  (Wilber) one’s own mind is intrinsically one with primordial spirit, primordial force-energy. Enlightenment is the remembering of buddha-mind, or the direct recognition or re-cognition of pure Emptiness, our place in the universe just as is—something that is totally, completely present right now, but we have perhaps forgotten it.

  We will recover from our fragmentation when we remember who and what we really are.

  Nothing is outside Emptiness. Emptiness does not choose sides.

  Enlightenment is thus not catching a really big wave, but noticing the already present wetness of whatever wave I’m on. Moreover, I am then radically liberated from the narrow identification with this little wave called me because I am fundamentally one with all other waves – no wetness is outside me. I am literally one taste with the entire ocean and its waves, and that taste is suchness, Emptiness – the utter transparency of the great perfection.