Nondual Highlights
Issue #1553 Saturday, September
13, 2003 Editor: Mark
When John Daido Loori was a
monk at the Los Angeles Zen Center, he remarked one day to
Maezumi Roshi: " I have resolved the question of life and
death."
"Are you sure?" Maezumi asked.
"Yes,"replied Loori.
"Are you really sure?:
Absolutely," Loori answered.
With that, Maezumi threw himself violently upon Loori and began
to strangle him. Gasping for breath, Loori struggled to escape,
but to no avail. Finally he swung back his fist and struck his
teacher, knocking him aside.
Maezumi rose to his feet and brushed himself off. "Resolved
the question of life and death, eh?" he laughed, and walked
off.
Later, still bearing the marks of his teacher's fingers on his
throat, Loori passed a senior monk, Genpo Sensei.
On seeing the bruises, Genpo did a double take. "Told Roshi
you'd resolved the question of life and death, did you?" he
said and strode away laughing.
- Sean Murphy from One Bird, One Stone: 108
American Zen Stories published by
Renaissance Books.
The greatest
mystery in life is not life itself, but death.
Death is the culmination and "blossoming" of life, it
is the "ultimate" mystery of life. In death, the whole
of one's life is summed up; in death you complete life's journey.
Life is simply a pilgrimage and journey towards death. From the
very moment of your birth, the process" of dying starts;
already you are moving towards death. And the greatest calamity
that has happened to human intelligence is that we are in denial
about death. Being in denial about the reality of death means you
will miss life's greatest mystery. You will miss the whole point
of having lived. You will miss the "true" meaning and
purpose of life itself, because life and death are deeply
involved with each other; they are not two separate phenomena.
The journey and the goal are not separate--the journey has
meaning only in relationship to the goal.
- Leonard Ingram
ARTIST
Accommodate
with no reverence
opposed to nature
and science
Appreciate
on a grand scale
the sanctity
of knowledge
Indulge
in the emancipation
from structure
and being
Build
beyond boundaries
of man’s truth
and musing
Revel
the simple sense
of lightness
and stain
Contrive
a promiscuous
morality
obscure and unclean
Draw
without fear
the chaos
and contradiction
Die
as you live
with doubtless
conviction
- Poem "ARTIST" by Ralph Turturro, Image
"Fall" by Ralph Turturro.
Guy Spiro of The
Monthly Aspectarian interviews Ram Dass:
TMA: We were all very shocked at your stroke in 1997, and are
very pleased you are making your recovery. What's the experience
been like for you?
RD: It awakened me, and I think it was grace, because it tuned me
back to God in a way that " Before the stroke, I was feeling
like I had a graced life, but the stroke sort of " it was
the end of the grace. I got down, had depression after the
stroke. It was a dark period, and that dark period gave impetus
to my spiritual work because in a way the stroke undermined my
feeling of grace and that really started me thinking about the
grace in my life. The stroke would be Fierce Grace.
-------
RD: My guru once said there was a girl standing in front of him,
an Indian girl, and she said: "I have so much suffering in
my life," and it was so poignant the way she said it. He
looked up, and he said, "I have some suffering. Suffering in
my life brings me closer to God." That statement is so close
to " We go into these incarnations, I keep wondering why,
and the why is that we have to learn how to suffer and we have to
learn how to love. Those are the things that we learn in
incarnations. Just learning suffering, suffering reflects
attachment, so as we lift those attachments, we get closer to
God.
------
TMA: Is there anything that you would like to say now about the
current reality in the world, the way things are? Perhaps your
thoughts on 9/11?
RD: Well, 9/11. I got woke up with my stroke, I was stroked by
God, and I wakened. I think that 9/11 stroked humanity. It's not
just this culture, but all of humanity. Because, I've noticed
that people speak more about who's up there. Fundamental
questions, what are we doing here, and so on. That stuff never
appeared on television or the radio or magazines but after 9/11,
those topics are often discussed.
TMA: It has caused the mainstream consciousness to examine life
in new ways.
RD: And examine death, and examine security, and examine security
vs. justice.
TMA: How do you see it all shaking out?
RD: Well, I think we aren't going to be the empire that we
anticipated. "We, the United States." I think this will
mature the dialogue of man. More people will turn to their inner
counsel. That's what will happen.
TMA: We're at a very interesting point in recorded human history.
When in history, for instance, would a country like Israel not
just simply conquer the region, and impose its will? When in
history would the United States along with the rest of the
developed world not simply conquer the rest of the world and
impose its will? At any time in the past, if a country had the
means, it used them. And now it's unthinkable.
RD: Because communication has improved tremendously. We all know
so much. In the past you could do something, and not mention it.
Great Britain did a huge number of things.
TMA: Without a second thought they created a global empire.
Without even considering whether they should or should not. And
now when you have a country like Israel in its region, and the
U.S. in the rest of the world with the means, we don't. I find
that just a remarkable development.
RD: Yes.
TMA: There has been such a shift in humanity that it's just such
an interesting time to be alive.
RD: Yes. I used to think that it was much more exciting in the
60s. But I now know that this is much more exciting because this
is more sandpaper to get us to get our act together. In the 60s
we were very naïve. Now we are so much more aware.
For Ram Dass, in this moment
of recognizing truth, the cerebral hemorrhage became what he
calls "heavy grace," a shift to perceiving illness as a
blessing rather than as misfortune. He admits in Still Here that
he may have brought on the stroke by neglecting to take his
blood-pressure medication and by ignoring a one-sided hearing
loss a month earlier. As a renunciate, he had given his body
negative value. With practice, however, after the stroke he
finally experienced detachment--from the pain, from his
high-profile roles, from his golf and surfing and cherished MG
sportscar.
His healing has come from honoring his body rather than
identifying with its pain. "Healing does not mean going back
to the way things were, but rather allowing what is now to move
us closer to God," he writes. Ram Dass may or may not walk
again; he may or may not have full use of his vocabulary again;
but his quest is no longer about achievement, it's about
awareness rather than identity--being on two planes of
consciousness at the same time, entering the body fully yet
remaining grounded in soul.
Liberation as opposed to loss. Love rather than fear. Acceptance
rather than suffering. These are some of the hallmarks of aging
consciously, which also requires breaking down stereotypes and
biases about aging--and about death itself. Ram Dass feels that
the older generations are in the vanguard of illuminating what he
calls a "social conspiracy" about aging that, for
example, perpetuates the strange ideas that dependency is wrong
and death is an outrage.
In his own journey of aging, Ram Dass has raised the bar on
suffering. If one searches for wholeness and divine union, which
is the soul's single purpose, then that quest must include
everything; nothing can be pushed away or grasped tightly. In
Still Here he writes, "The stroke was unbearable to the Ego,
and so it pushed me into the Soul level also . . . and that's
grace. From the Soul's perspective it's been a great learning
experience. Although I'm more in the spirit now, I'm also more
human."
Ram Dass said he has returned from this particular scouting party
to announce that spirit is more powerful than the vicissitudes of
aging. Faith and love are stronger than change, stronger even
than death. Faith, we must ask, in what? His answer is simple:
"That the universe is benevolent."
Pat Enkyo O'Hara,
who is now the resident teacher at the Village Zendo in New York
City, was serving as caretaker of altars and offerings during a
three-month training period at Zen Mountain Center in Idyllwild,
California. During one very formal memorial ceremony, as she was
carrying a tray of elegant, lacquered wooden offering cups
between two buildings, one of the cups tumbled from the tray and
landed among some rocks, resulting in a prominent chip in its
highly polished surface.
Devastated, she went to Maezumi Roshi and announced her intention
to order a new one from Japan.
"Why?" asked Roshi. "With the chip it is more
valuable. See? Just as it is."
Over the years, says O'Hara, "this has emerged as his great
teaching for me... He was broken. I am broken. And when we can
see that we are all chipped and broken, we begin to see that we
are truly perfect and complete, just as we are..."
- Sean Murphy from One Bird, One Stone: 108
American Zen Stories published by
Renaissance Books.
When John Daido Loori was a
monk at the Los Angeles Zen Center, he remarked one day to
Maezumi Roshi: " I have resolved the question of life and
death."
ARTIST
For Ram Dass, in this moment
of recognizing truth, the cerebral hemorrhage became what he
calls "heavy grace," a shift to perceiving illness as a
blessing rather than as misfortune. He admits in Still Here that
he may have brought on the stroke by neglecting to take his
blood-pressure medication and by ignoring a one-sided hearing
loss a month earlier. As a renunciate, he had given his body
negative value. With practice, however, after the stroke he
finally experienced detachment--from the pain, from his
high-profile roles, from his golf and surfing and cherished MG
sportscar.