After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

I'm re-reading this lovely book which is chock full of sweet morsels.  Every paragraph I feel like sharing something, wishing you could join me for a little bedtime reading out loud.  Grab yer pillows and gather round.  I'll pass the book and we can share the reading.  Tomorrow we can read a different one if you like.  Invite us to your place.

From: 
After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path
by  Jack Kornfield
Author of Path of the Heart

Chapter 9:
No Enlightened Retirement
...
On the night of the Buddha's enlightenment, after vowing to awaken, he was attacked by the armies of Mara, the god of illusion and evil.   Seated under the Bodhi Tree, he was able  to meditate unmoved by Mara's strongest temptations of greed and pleasure.  Then wtih a heart of compassion he overcame the anger and agression unleashed by Mara, and Mara left, defeated.   After this the Enlightened One rose to teach throughout India for fourty-five years. 

In stories of the Buddha's later life, however, we learn that Mara's disappearance was only temporary.  Many times afterward Mara returned to fight or tempt or undermine the Buddha.  It is said teh Buddha recognized Mara each time he appeared and so was not caught by temptation, fear, or doubt.  "Is that you again, Mara?" the Buddha would ask, and being recognized, Mara would silp away, only to try again another time.

In other texts the Buddha and Mara actually become friendly.  In one version the Blessed One is seated in a cave when Mara reappears.   The disciples outside become frightened and try to get rid of Mara, calling him an enemy of  their teacher.  "Did the Buddha say he had enemies?"  counters Mara.  Seeing the untruth of their words, they reluctantly summon the Buddha who responds immediately with interest.
    "Oh, my old friend has come," says the Buddha, as he warmly greets Mara, inviting him in for tea.  "How have you been?" As they sit together, Matra complains how difficult it is to be an evil one all the time.  The  Buddha listens to Mara's stories sympathetically and then asks, "Do you think it is easy to be a Buddha? Do you know what they do to my teachings , what they do in the name of the Buddha at some of my temples?  There are difficulties being in either role, a Buddha or a Mara.  No one is exempt."   In one scripture the story ends when Mara becomes awakened as a Buddha himself.

Inevitable Transitions
No matter what version is read, Mara does not go away.  There is no state of enlightened retirement., no experience of awakening that places us outside the truth of change.  Everything breathes and turns in its cycles.  The moon,  the stock market, our hearts, the wheeling galaxies all expand and contract with the rhythm of life.   All spiritual life exists in an alteration of gain and loss, pleasure and pain.  For each of us, even the Buddha, it is only a letting go into this truth that we awaken to that which is timeless, the reality of freedom.

Chapter 8
Beyond Satori ...  Two Visions of Awakening
Whether we hold to a perfect ideal or to freedom within our humanity, awkening is a mystery with which each tradition and student has to grapple.  The resolution of this mystery will finally be answered in the heart.  It is here that the opposites can be held, understood, reconciled.   Only the heart can contain both our perfection and our humanity.

Leaving maps and expectations behind, in the end we must turn our hearts in the direction of love and awareness, come what may.   In living from this awakened heart we all become bodhisattvas, all servants of the Divine.  We replace any claims of levels of enlightenment with a vow to awaken each moment, together, with all beings.  This is the path of patience, compassion, wisdom, and generosity, the path of our willingness to live in the reality of the present.  Only here can we find freedom and rest in the timelessness of perfection.

As Suzuki Roshi put it: "Strickly speaking, there are no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity."   If there is a self who claims enlightenment, that is not it.  Instead, he went on, "What we are speaking about is moment-to-moment enlightenment, one enlightenment after another."

More Poetry than Mapmaking
    The ultimate end of the  koans might be seen in the following story, a bit of modern Zen humor regarding  a disciple who sent his master faithful accounts of his spiritual progress.  In the first month, the student wrote, "I feel an expansion of consciousness and experience oneness with the universe."  The master glanced at the note and threw it away.  The following month, this is what the student had to say: "I finally discovered that the Divine is present in all things."   The master seemed disappointed.
    In his third letter the disciple enthusiastically explained, "The mystery of the One and the many has been revealed to my wondering gaze."  The master yawned.  The next letter said, "No one is born, no one lives, no one dies, for the self is not." The master threw up his hands in despair.
    After that a month passed, then two,then five, then a whole year.  The master thought it was time to remind his disciple  of his duty to keep him informed of his spiritual progress.  The disciple wrote back, "I am simply living my life.  And for spiritual practice, who cares?"  When the master read that he cried, "Thank God.  He's got it at last." 
    The story reflects the Zen teaching of the perfection of things as they are.  The white crane in the snow is a white crane standing in the snow, the black crow at midnight is trulyl itself.

Ideals Are Not Realities
What then are we to make of maps(paths to enlightenment) that do not inlcude poetry and humor, that seem literally to prescribe a steady linear, upward ascent?  The risk is that we may try to climb their stages only to become lost in a cloud of unreachable ideals.   It may be useful to examine how such a map can function in our actual life of practice, taking Tibetan Buddhism's Ten Bhumis as our example.
    Described as the ten stages of awakening the Buddha Nature, the Bhumis are called in sequence: Stage One, "Joyous"; Stage Two, "Immaculate"; Stage Three, "Luminous"; Stage Four, "Radiant"; and so forth.  The "Joyous" level begins after stream entry; though lofty and pure, it does not include some ordinary human practices, such as vows of great generosity and the wish to bring awakening to all sentient beings.  The pratitioner who has attained the second Bhumi, however, must be able to see clairvoyantly into the past and future, to enter a hundred forms of deep meditation, to make the body multiply and appear in many places and forms at once, to cause a hundred Buddhas and bodhisatttvas to appear around them wherever they go.  And the third through tenth stages speak of powers even more miraculous and remarkable than this.
    When I asked an old lama from Tibet about whether these ten stages are in fact part of the practice, he said, "Of course tehy really exist."  But when I inquired who in his tradition had attained them, he replied wistfully, "In these difficult times I can not name a single lama who has mastered even the second stage."
    Of course, there is an archetypal truth to these stages beyond what this exchange may acknowledge.   in moments of grace or illumination, we are indeed surrounded by Buddhas -- we see the Buddha Nature in every being we meet.  And we make our body multifold whenever we experience how every being is interconnected with our own body, how the web of life, of rain forest, redwood, mushroom,  and mitochondria is who we are.  In other words, even these ostensibly literal maps may be better read as if they were a kind of poem, rich in possible meanings.

...More later...