108zenbooks

Everyone’s got one these days.  Bucket lists, I mean.  My friends no longer talk about dreams or dreams-of-a-lifetime; they talk in terms of bucket lists.  I have nothing against lists.  In fact, I am an inveterate list maker.   I have lists of kanji characters I intend to practice; they are lovingly copied and cross-referenced with the indecipherable dictionary of kanji  variations that is also on my list to learn how to read.  I have a list of books I intend to read; these are written by Nobel prize winners in Literature.  I have a list of ways to remember what Frank says so that next Christmas I don’t forget and I complain to Frank that he never tells me what he likes.

Bucket lists however make my skin creep up one side of my body and down the other.  They feel riven with the need to prove we’ve lived life to the fullest.  It’s as if at my funeral you will all be checking my list and deciding whether to say, “Well, she had a good life, didn’t she!”  I can spare you the dilemma and even the cost of flying across the country to make any such pronouncements.

Anything I do with my life is going to be the result of a confluence of an innumerable number of things, most of which I will have had little control over.  So should I win the Nobel Prize, it’s not me doing it.  Should I summit a mountain somewhere or cross a burning desert, it’s not me.  Should I meet you in a coffee shop and have a deep, heart-felt exchange of spirit of love, it’s (definitely) not me.

So who is it?  Who is it then, who crosses burning landscapes, shivers with delight at the peak of success, collapses in a heap when things just fall apart?

In the Heart Sutra, Avalokita sees through the bucket list.  He sees that “all five streams of body and mind are boundless.”  While I love the feel of boundlessness, don’t go dropping me into a place without guardrails too quickly; I may turn tail and make off to a place on my own bucket list.  The version I like says Avalokita “gave rise to the five skandhas.”  It feels nice to think that someone as accomplished as Avalokita would be contemplating the nature of reality and the five ways we interface with the world pop up for him too.  (Form, feelings, perception, mental formations, and discernment (consciousness in some versions) co-create what I see as “I-me-mine.”)

The difference, of course, between a Bodhisattva like Avalokita and me, is that he isn’t bothered by the five streams or his mind.  That’s the whole point of this verse; he sees them for what they are.  He brings them into focus, gives rise to them so that they can be smack in the cross-hairs of his investigation.  Me, I turn into a Venus fly trap for all the ways the five heaps can become a drama.  Objects don’t meet my needs, itchy noses and runny eyes are clearly unpleasant and harbingers of doom, everyone has it easier than I do, or no one appreciates that I’m “special.”  That’s only four.  When it comes to dealing with the heap of my mind… well, that says it all, doesn’t it?

But maybe that’s just what my practice is for the moment.  These five heaps are plunked around me and they remind me of the true nature of “I-me-mine.”  So every time someone pulls out a bucket list, I notice the five streams of body and mind burbling to me about digging deeper than defining myself by what I’ve done or not done or going to do or not do.

After the heroics of trying to suppress my coughing fits over two weeks, I began to see flashes of white light in my visual field.  Thankfully I’m not so deluded as to have thought it was anything more than my sense organ having a conniption.  But when dark gashes started appearing around the periphery of my vision, I began to ruminate about blindness and incapacity.  Frank, of course, routinely carries the sharp sword of wisdom and quietly made an appointment with the eye doctor.  She was a delight; perhaps I only think so because she took me seriously and spent a good chunk of time checking my eyeballs out – inside and out.  No retinal tears (I had already self-diagnosed via Dr. Google)!  What a relief.  I returned to my state of being a superior practitioner feeling quite smug that all that meditation does pay off when you’re having your retina scanned.  Which is, of course, why we meditate, right?

Then the lovely lady informed me that the problems I’ve been having with a burning sensation in my eyes is not allergies.  Since it only happens when I read, it would have been tragic to learn I was allergic to books, Kindles, iPads, and iPhones! No, no allergies.  Hence no quick fixes of antihistamines twice a day.

It was the quality of my tears.  Apparently, my lacrimal glands suck at expressing themselves.  In the realm of aspiring bodhisattvas, this could be a problem.  So I have been faithfully applying hot compresses and massaging my eyelids.  Now instead of burning sensations, they feel like they’re stumbling through a sandstorm.  I am told that this too will pass.

All of this has me thinking about practice.  I know, I know.  I’m always harping about practice but you must admit, I’ve backed off a bit by dropping the ending salutation on each post: “Thank you for practicing.”  It began to feel rather preachy and I couldn’t decide between “practising” the Canadian way and “practicing” the American way.

Nevertheless, it is about practice – and not only because some forms of practice get us through an MRI, a dental exam, a prostate or pap test (yes, gents, we too suffer), or anything else that reminds us of our mortality.  In the Heart Sutra, Avalokita, that great practitioner of compassion (whose lacrimal glands produce high quality tears that are a nectar of healing, I’d imagine) is said to have been engaged in “deep practice” when he/she realized the profoundness of our being.  That’s the first line.   If we never get beyond that line of the short version or never delve into the 125,000 verses, that one phrase is enough.

“Avalokiteshavara, while moving in the deep course of perfect understanding…”

Does it boggle your mind?  It knocked the socks off mine.  Here is someone who has attained enlightenment, defers transcending into absolute boundlessness… and she’s still practicing!

If you haven’t just run out of excuses, I have!