Monday, June 05, 2006
Pain, Anger, Bliss, Pain
I think this is cycle that continues forever. For the last several days, my body has experienced rather intense pain. I have never experienced arthritis as such, but this felt like a "flare-up" of something of that sort. Everything hurt, from my toes to my head. What is going on, I asked, and tried to think of answers.
This morning, as I lay in bed doing a bit of self-reiki, I remembered something which we all know but which I tend to forget--physical pain is often triggered by mind states, emotions pressing to the surface. And I recalled that anger is often associated with arthritis.
And then I realized that I was indeed carrying some buried anger, and I went over the circumstances. As I reflected on this feeling, my body grew more and more relaxed. Ultimately, the pain disappeared. Eureka! I said. It works.
I then went in to do my morning practice before the Buddha. I only meant to spend a few minutes there, but the experience was, once more, so exquisite and refined, I continued for more than an hour. I even saw (but dimly) the Buddha's face and form as mine. What is this? I puzzled. I don't think I am Buddha. I certainly don't feel like Buddha. Then I remembered something from my long ago period of awakening. One of the traditions in the Buddhist empowerment ceremony is to allow the candidate to be (literally) crowned, as if he or she were royalty. I had in effect not experienced this part of the ceremony (it would have seemed quite a stretch at the time), although other aspects of the initiation were presented inwardly (such as ablution, hearing my new name, holding the bell and vajra--I seemed to be able to recreate these intuitively, though I had no knowledge of such rites.)
So I wondered if somehow this outer/inner image was presented to complete the earlier ceremony.
I would like to end this story here. Wondrous bliss flowed through my body during the entire experience, as it so often has in the past. And, as it has so often happened in the past, the bliss did not last. My back started hurting again in a few hours. I wondered if the wind, bearing pollen and dust, was at fault. As my friend Jeannine has often questioned, "Is it energies or allergies?"
I took an allergy pill (herbs) and hoped for the best.
Obviously, I am not ready to be a Buddha, though I do seem to get little glimpses of transcendence now and then.
And, clearly, it is indeed true that pleasure and pain are part of the same cycle, inextricably bound together in a single process--as the song says, "You can't have one without the other."
Darn!
This morning, as I lay in bed doing a bit of self-reiki, I remembered something which we all know but which I tend to forget--physical pain is often triggered by mind states, emotions pressing to the surface. And I recalled that anger is often associated with arthritis.
And then I realized that I was indeed carrying some buried anger, and I went over the circumstances. As I reflected on this feeling, my body grew more and more relaxed. Ultimately, the pain disappeared. Eureka! I said. It works.
I then went in to do my morning practice before the Buddha. I only meant to spend a few minutes there, but the experience was, once more, so exquisite and refined, I continued for more than an hour. I even saw (but dimly) the Buddha's face and form as mine. What is this? I puzzled. I don't think I am Buddha. I certainly don't feel like Buddha. Then I remembered something from my long ago period of awakening. One of the traditions in the Buddhist empowerment ceremony is to allow the candidate to be (literally) crowned, as if he or she were royalty. I had in effect not experienced this part of the ceremony (it would have seemed quite a stretch at the time), although other aspects of the initiation were presented inwardly (such as ablution, hearing my new name, holding the bell and vajra--I seemed to be able to recreate these intuitively, though I had no knowledge of such rites.)
So I wondered if somehow this outer/inner image was presented to complete the earlier ceremony.
I would like to end this story here. Wondrous bliss flowed through my body during the entire experience, as it so often has in the past. And, as it has so often happened in the past, the bliss did not last. My back started hurting again in a few hours. I wondered if the wind, bearing pollen and dust, was at fault. As my friend Jeannine has often questioned, "Is it energies or allergies?"
I took an allergy pill (herbs) and hoped for the best.
Obviously, I am not ready to be a Buddha, though I do seem to get little glimpses of transcendence now and then.
And, clearly, it is indeed true that pleasure and pain are part of the same cycle, inextricably bound together in a single process--as the song says, "You can't have one without the other."
Darn!
