Monthly Archives: January 2010

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last mile

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I was playing on dictionary.com and entered the word “last” + the wild card *.  Along with the usual suspects of “last gasp”, “last straw” and so on, was “last mile”.  But it wasn’t the last mile of a condemned person.

last mile

The phrase used to describe one of the problems in attaining higher-speed, higher-capacity information flow to every household. It refers to the copper telephone wire that still carries information to households. The limited capacity of the wire slows data transmission even though it is possible to send data over high-capacity systems from anywhere in the world to within the “the last mile” (give or take) before the house. The use of cable technology, fiber optic technology, and wireless satellite technology are several of the solutions used to address this problem.

I wonder if our wiring to receive bodhisattva-hood is similar?

Uchiyama writes that a bodhisattva is one who lives by vow and repentance.  I had to suspend my automatic assumptions of these words to understand his meaning.  To live without being derailed by emotions and thoughts, to devote ourselves to the growth and care of others,  to set the course in that direction is vow.  It is a life direction, the zazen practitioners’ whole life direction.  To repent is to know our inability to fulfill it.  It is not a matter for regret or seeking forgiveness but rather a willingness to face what is – life straight on.

When there is no vow, we lose sight of progress;
when there is no repentance, we lose our way.

You are a bodhisattva.  I am a bodhisattva.  Yet I also perceive things differently from you, experience things in ways that do not always transmit across that last mile. In that silence, I falter and get lost.  It makes me wonder what the attrition rate is for bodhisattvas?

But we try again, anyway:  to transmit across that last mile, to cultivate willingness to continue even when blind to any progress we may be making and lost to all but ourselves.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

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last being

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There’s an old saying, “The poor farmer makes weeds, the mediocre one makes crops, and the skilled farmer makes soil.”

from Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama

Not being last has become a deep question for me.  I haven’t fully grasped it or refined my thinking into it.  Just a warning that this post is a working on progress.

Growing up I had a sense that there were two categories which measured performance: First and the Rest.  Later I was taught to say supportive things like, “Well, if you’re going to be last, be the Best Last!”  I don’t think the kids to whom I imparted that piece of useless wisdom bought it because… frankly, kids are good at spotting a BSBB… bullshit brain baffler.

Not being last has been a driving force for me in my career, my limpid athletic endeavours, everything.  Then some unknown time ago, I began to feel this drivenness more as a puzzle than an imperative.

Standing at the early-registration table for a conference on mindfulness, I was jostled aside by another registrant who indicated she had got there first.  I smiled and said, “It’s ok.  As long as we’re not the last.”

“If you’re going to be last, then be the best last,” she responded sharply.

Never one to resist a teaching moment or a red cape, I snorted oxishly, “There’s only four of us here.  If we were the last, what would happen to this conference?”

Kyle responded to the initiating post on this topic, Only when we see ourselves as seperate (sic) from first and last do first and last occur. First and last are no different.

Perhaps.  In historic reality, first and last are distinctly – extinctly – different.  There are consequences to being last.  I think about the Do-Do bird.  The dinosaurs.  The recent extinct species in North America.  What made them the last of their kind?  In the race to survival, what failed for them?

The answer might be as simple as the fact that something didn’t get passed on.  Some crucial factor or teaching about adaptation wasn’t cultivated.  All beings are vulnerable to this system failure.  I suspect, even Bodhisattvas are capable of becoming the last being.

So, in that first moment of our Bodhisattva-hood, what is required of us to not be the last?

Thank you for practicing.

Genju

with thanks to Zendotstudio for reminding me to return to Uchiyama.