Friday, March 05, 2010
And yet more of the Vision (and a visit to the Bay Area)
In this morning's meditation I received a few brief glimpses of the lifetime that had emerged two days ago. First, I had the sense of buckets being carried filled with -- what? flowers? fruit? No, neither of these. Finally, it came. It was yak dung, used for fuel in the monastery. It had been my job to carry buckets and buckets of these up the steep incline to the temple. Then there was a flash to another time, another "me," now much more mature and evolved, someone who had a position of responsibility in the sangha. I wondered how many times he had bowed or made obeisance to the Buddha in the main hall.
My energies, so pronounced early on, had now diminished, and were now like delicate streams of light playing here and there over the body. Once more, the initial surge after the full moon was the strongest, but these diminished day by day after the onset. We'll see what happens in the future.
Recently I spent two weeks in the Bay Area. I had a wonderful time,visiting with close friends, traveling up to Big Sur on a perfect sunny day, and going to the incredible Monterey acquarium, one of the most outstanding in the country. But later I reflected that my good time had not included any "mystical moments," but rather included the best of "ordinary consciousness." And, delightful as these were, none compared with the exquisite quality of the experience I encountered on my return. Perhaps I might say that the Beloved was waiting in my living room and our reunion was sweet.
What would it be like to live perpetually in a Buddha field, such as that created in an ancient monastery, when human consciousness of the higher reality was constatly reinforced by reminders of the transcendent? We can study history, gaze on early day paintings and relics, and listen to CD's, but we, as products of a different culture and time, can never fully enter into the state of awareness and feeling that marked each moment of their lives. They were, I think, shaped in a different mold, and our attempts to recapture those lost states of being can offer only minuscule tastes of such existence.
(Note: the pictures were taken on my visit. They include a stellar jay (in Big Sur),the Monterey Aquarium, my hostess (Maude Gonne), and a sea gull in flight near Monterey.)
