Tag Archives: Prajnaparamita

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a poke in the ribs

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Iha Shariputra!

That’s Avalokita giving the Great Sage a knock on the head, a poke in the ribs.  Wake up!  Shariputra was renowned for his ability to think through the Buddha’s teachings – a fact that supposedly delayed his ascendency to arhantship by a week behind his pal Maudgalyayana.    But what Avaloikta is saying here to this very well-achieved and learned disciple of the Buddha is “Don’t stop at knowing the five streams of body and mind, the Three Poisons, the 12 stages of Dependent Origination, the Four Noble Truths!”  We can dive deeper than the dis-illusion of self into the five streams of body and mind.  It’s much more than annihilating the self, deconstructing I-me-mine.

When my brother was in the seminary, he used to give me Bibles for presents.  I have a nice collection that, although I shake my head at his inability to understand the twelve year old I was, I do treasure.  “There’s Good News in this!” he would proclaim, thrusting the massive volumes at me.  I suppose if I had worked as hard at the Bible as Shariputra had at the five skandhas, Three Poisons, 12 Stages of Dependent Origination, and the Four Noble Truths, I might have found the Good News.

Form is the same as boundless; boundlessness is the same as form works for me as Good News.  It means practice is not about getting rid of something or becoming perfect at anything.  In fact, translating the Heart Sutra as the “Perfection of Wisdom” appears to set the bar rather high.  It seems to say, Grasp the non-existence of a fixed self and non-duality and you’ve got it made.  Well, that’s not what is meant by “Perfection” nor is it likely to happen in my world where I tend to trip on solid objects and step on people’s soft emotional centers like a sociopathic bull.

I’m reminded again and again by Kaz Tanahashi Sensei’s words: The enso is not perfect but it is complete.  Complete because it contains the perfect and the imperfect nondiscriminately.  Form and boundlessness are not discriminable; together they are complete.

The more I sit with this, the simpler it becomes:

Iha Shariputra!  Iha Genju!

Or if you’re into the Japanese version: Sha Ri Shi!  Genju!

You there!

Wake up and stretch beyond the lists that limit you from completion.

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heaps in my bucket list

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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.