“A group of immigrants enters a new world”

  Etiwanda, California at the Myohoji Temple, October 24, 1976 at precisely 11:13:14 am, Pacific Daylight Savings Time, the priest taps me on the head with a scroll rolled up in a white envelope tied with a blue ribbon, the Gohonzon (object of worship); one of a group of fourteen other celebrants. At the moment my head is tapped, friend Robert LuPone (who lured me into this strange celebration) clocks the time on one of his precision watches:  11:13:14 am Pacific daylight time.

  Strange, perhaps, but the moment we had entered the temple that day, hearing soft, mysterious sounds of chanting, Nam Myoho Renge-kyo, I turn to Bob and Kathy to say, ”I’ve been here before.” If this is true, I’ve never left this world in forty years.

  Found in the symbolism marking that formal entry into the Buddha’s teachings we find the Zodiac degree for the Sun’s position relative to the eastern horizon as 23° Sagi­ttarius, the “Rising Sign” or the true nature of the moment, the start of the first house where one discovers through life experiences How to envision and deal with destiny:

a group of immigrants as they fulfill the require­ments for entrance into the new country.  Keynote:  Consciously accepting the ways of a new stage of experience, in readiness for the opportunities it will present. . . “We find our­selves in a period of TRANSITION [Rudhyar’s key word].  We have to imitate, yet retain our inner integrity.”

  Well, forty years later, still at it, and the original Gohonzon received that day still graces my meditation center. (Robert LuPone, by the way, has been active in theatre all these years, currently as Director/Founder of Manhattan Class Company in New York.) Practice is much different than earlier days, and I no longer formally belong to any Buddhist sect. As to “results” and “merits” derived? Perhaps some of them may be seen in the postings here at “Ancestral Well.”

Everything and everyone are connected,

Nothing has an ego

from: “The Buddha” PBS Documentary

Richard Gere, Principal Narrator

  What the Buddha realizes is that if we can get rid of this fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the self, based on egotism, we won’t cling to things, we won’t screw up everything we do because we’re thinking about it in the wrong way.

  “After washing my feet,” the disciple said, “I watch the water going down the drain. I am calm. I control my mind, like a noble, thoroughbred horse. Taking a lamp, I enter my cell. Thinking of sleep, I sit on my bed. I touch the wick. The lamp goes out – Nirvana. My mind is freed.”

  Richard Gere: The mind is as restless as a monkey, the Buddha taught. Who you are, what you think of as your “self,” is constantly changing, like a river endlessly flowing. One thing today, another tomorrow.

  Jane Hirshfield, Poet: There’s water in the river, then there’s water in the glass, and then water is back in the air, and then it’s back in the river. The water’s there, but what is it? That’s the way to think about the self in Buddhism. One moment you’re angry, the next moment, you’re laughing. Who are you?

  Blair Brown: A seed becomes a plant. Wisps of grass are spun into a rope. A trickling stream turns into a river.

  Jane Hirshfield: The self comes and the self goes. Simply notice how from one moment to another your self is not as much the same as we think it is.

  D. Max Moerman, Barnard College: What the Buddha realizes is that if we can get rid of this fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the self, based on egotism, we won’t cling to things, we won’t screw up everything we do because we’re thinking about it in the wrong way.

  Jane Hirshfield: Once you stop centering your feelings about your feelings on your self, what naturally arises is simple compassion, compassion for your own suffering, compassion for the suffering of others.

  Gere: Even the most abstract of the Buddha’s teachings had a practical dimension. Compassion, the Buddha taught, comes from understanding impermanence, transience, flow, how one thing passes into another, how everything and everyone is connected.

Banishing fear, 

the subtle truth of the Buddha’s Teachings

  Unfortunately in today’s world, at least until the election, fear and hate seem to dominate the landscape; more than enough religions harbor fear, condemning their followers to live closely guarded lives, to set themselves apart from others. Ignorance and fear are at the root cause of this “holier-than-thou” phenomenon.

  An awareness of the “true Laws of Existence” can lead us in the opposite direction to arrive at a place where we “integrate all the many diverse experiences of life” and through this “mindfulness” learn to celebrate life in each moment dispelling compassionately all discriminations and judgments which separate us from others, fear and insecurity banished forever.

  One needs a “longing heart” to seek and find this mindfulness for themselves. One should learn to think holistically. The Buddha in The Threefold Lotus Sutra: I behold all living creatures sunk in the sea of suffering hence I do not reveal myself but set them all aspiring, till, when their hearts are longing, I appear to preach the law.

  In our world today, “The Buddha appearing to preach the law,” simply means our acceptance of the great pervading  and eternal life-force existing in all our lives causing everything and everyone to live—realizing that an intuitive method of spiritual training aims first of all, at discovering a reality in the innermost recesses of the human mind—a reality that is the fundamental unity pervading all the differences and particulars of the world; that we are equal in terms of the value of our existence. When we realize this, “the Buddha is appearing to preach the law.”

  When I first connected with teachings of the Buddha in 1976, I had not the slightest knowledge of these things. The connection was with an intensive “spiritual practice” with an even more intense community (many of them close friends) which lit a fire under us each day if we wanted to belong and continue the practice.

  In my ignorance however, I experienced in life an instinctive realization that I was part of a community – not just the group’s community, but in touch somehow with all those who came into my world.

  Most notably, only a day or two after beginning to practice, driving the deadening Interstate 5 to San Francisco, with the sudden realization that everyone on the road with me were “going somewhere,” that we were all part of a community, the strain of competing, trying to be “first” vanished. Impatience? vanished. Strain? vanished.