A Dream and a Cremation

I had a dream a few days ago, the details of which are not terribly important I suppose, except that it was a rather lucid sort of dream about a meeting between a cast of characters who all turned out to be different aspects of myself. They were discussing the question "Why are you here?". 

The meaning of “here” was a bit vague – it could have meant here in the dream, here at the temple, here wherever one finds oneself, here in a body, here in the universe… Actually, they are all the same “here” anyway I suppose. From the point of view of ultimate reality, there is nowhere that isn’t “here”. But that’s a digression from the actual question, which is a good one I think. “Why are you here?”  The answer to this question will change and shift with time and perception, but it points to who and what we think we are, as well as to what we think we are looking for. The answer also points to what is important to us.

Unfortunately, the meeting was adjourned approximately two seconds before my alarm clock went off, and "we" didn't arrive at any hard and fast conclusions.

There was a cremation here a few days ago. An old nun passed away from cancer. Most of the temple people gathered in a clearing near one end of the temple grounds. Monks had worked through the heat of a very hot and sultry day to stack logs in a platform seven layers high, to set up lights and generator and chairs and mats. The coffin was high on the stack of logs, nuns ranged in rows on one side, monks milling about on another, laypeople on mats on the ground on another, trees behind. Luang por arrived. There were no words, no memories or telling of stories or talking about what was or might be. He lit the fire and the flames leaped through the dry wood quickly. Monks gathered around the growing flames, giving their own versions of blessings. Luang por left.

People were given little flowers made of wood shavings to throw on the flames, which we did very quickly as the inferno was extremely hot. We sat for a while, watching the flames dashing for the sky, rising over 2/3 the height of the nearby trees and showering sparks into the wind of its own passage. Gradually, people drifted off. The generator shut down and the lights went out. Heat lightening flashed frequently, but silently, in the distance and the hot air of the night had a lightly burning feel to it, when it found enough energy to sulk past on a small breeze.

It is the Korean custom to be present during a cremation and so when Joy died her family and I walked down to the funeral home. We watched as her body, on its little pallet of wood and cardboard, was placed in the furnace and waited while the furnace roared and she was consumed… these are images etched onto my memory.

Hardwood burns for a long time. The coffin was consumed and the logs threatening to fall before I left, but the platform still stood, the orange flames burning my memory along with the remains of a life I had not known. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, and we will all be here one day.

The next day I went again to look at the cremation site. The monks had been there already and everything was gone. The wood, the fire, the ashes, the lights. Nothing but a clearing and an open spot of earth under a hot blue sky.

On the door to my room someone has written the words “The Buddha’s path leads beyond the delusive notions of self and death.” In his video about a shift in perception Adyashanti talks laughingly about dying with a person who is going through the process of her own awakening. That there is more to life and death than life and death seems to be a certainty. But, he says you can’t take anything with you into that something more, not even your self.

As I write this, the birds are singing – as they pretty much always are here – the sky is clouded but spots of bright sunshine appear from time to time. A fan is blowing hot air across my hotter body and I have been staying by myself for most of the morning. I notice that I have fallen back into a habit of mine of writing from an almost sorrowful place, like the writing is a photograph all in sepia. That’s a symptom of falling into the past and holding to it I think, as if it was better somehow than the present. Hmm…

So – after all this rambling about, I will leave you with the dreamed question that started all of this.

Why are you here?

Belief, Enlightenment and Being Normal

So the days have been passing slowly and quickly, at the same time, which seems at first glance to be an impossibility but is really quite ordinary, not to mention possible. It seems that many things are that way.

Yesterday I had a chance to leave the temple for the first time in a while. We went to a cave that I haven’t been to before (which was a surprise because over the past 7 months it seems like I’ve been pretty much everywhere in this province of Loei). The cave was (and is) very large and very long with walls rounded and smoothed by eons of flowing water. Afterwards we had lunch on a raft floating on a small lake. I was elected captain of the raft and “got” to wheel us out into the lake by turning a homemade capstan attached to a rope tethered to both sides of the lake. It slipped and didn’t work terribly well, but we made slow progress and were able to enjoy a lunch cooled by the water breeze.

I’ve been working in the kitchen most mornings and afternoons. It is generally lots of repetitive small stuff – like cutting what seemed like a ton of ginger into tiny slivers yesterday, or rolling little balls of a tofu mixture that got deep-fried like falafel this morning, along with all kinds of other tasks like washing dishes or stirring the big woks, or hefting ice for the many large ice boxes that are used to keep things cold. It’s simple work, tedious and long and hot but it feels like good training right now – training in just sitting and doing and being at the same time.

I’ve been coming to some conclusions lately that have kind of snuck up on me. In the way of these things, they seem quite obvious and ordinary now, but would have felt unreal and extraordinary only a little while ago. The conclusions, at this point at least, are that “enlightenment” does exist, there are people alive in the world who are “in it” – quite a few actually – and it is attainable. It doesn’t depend on religion or belief, and while mystical experience can be a part of it, it doesn’t seem to be a necessary part. It’s also not something that can be arrived at, tried for or gotten through effort or intention. It is a state beyond “me”, and so anything “I” do is simply more “me”. Enlightenment is always beyond this idea of “me”.

The natural law, and truth, of the universe is that everything changes. What is believed or experienced today will be different tomorrow. We can hold desperately to what we believe and in our clinging become uncomfortable, stiff, rigid, and sick, or we can let go into the knowing that everything is always different. No belief is permanent, no mind state, no experience, no object, no body, no self…  It’s just the way it is.

Having spent some time now with someone who I believe is able to live this truth of change in an “enlightened” way I’ve had an opportunity to experience the edges of the sense of it, and to hear the words used in an attempt to describe it. Comparing that with other words from other people who have no connection whatsoever to this teacher or this place I am finding that there is a high rate of similarity between them.

Mooji has a lot of great quotes as well as many videos of his talks, and his way of describing the experience contains many similarities to what I hear here.  Adyashanti has a surprisingly fresh and “normalizing” way of talking about the same thing, and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar  also has similar things to say. Mooji’s teacher, Papaji, who was a student of Sri Ramana Maharshi has a very powerful energy about him, and he also says many of the same things. Papaji says that enlightenment is easy, but letting go enough to be still and allow it to happen is more difficult. Enlightenment already always is, but we are conditioned to believe that we are not in it. He also says that God is everywhere, but not visible as long as there is a “me” trying to see it. There are so many words, so many teachers and so many ways of using the conditioning of the past, the beliefs from which one comes, to try to describe what does not depend on beliefs or on conditions. But there is really nothing new to say about it.

I always appreciate people’s thoughts and comments about the blogs, even if I sometimes don’t get them answered. (Sorry about that – I think I’ve gotten most of them answered though…) It’s so interesting to see how the same words are seen differently by different people, and to read the reflections that people send back to me. It helps me to see more meaning in what I’ve written often. I asked Vicky if I could share what she sent last time, and she didn’t object so here is an excerpt, written in response to the giggling, bell clanging, wonderful ladies at the mountain shrine that I wrote about in my last post:

“…I will also use it as a reminder that, despite everything we humans do on this planet, the silence, the peace, the beauty, the life force energy, lives on as a vibrant undercurrent, undisturbed by our bell clanging, giggling, crashing and smashing.  If we simply move to a space beyond the noise we are then held in the place where everything is 'being' not 'doing'.  

Everything external flows by.  We become a part of 'the All".  I guess the trials, challenges and turmoils are like passing thunder storms.  Some rush past quickly, some just touch us on the fringes, some shake the very earth beneath our feet, dropping us to our knees in a reaction of primal memory.  But they pass us by.  Sometimes they cause great damage and destruction, burning huge areas or toppling a single giant of a tree.  But always there is renewal.  That never ends.  Our Mother will always renew herself and if we trust and allow, she provides space and energy for our own renewal as well.  

It is truly incredible what I am feeling right now.  It is as though the wind blowing outside is part of me, the new spring that is on the horizon is renewal within me as well.  And the underlying peace and silence is me..  I feel such gratitude for everything in this moment.  Life is the winds and storms and thunder and lightening swirling all around us.  It is the giggling, the bird chatter, the parties and struggles, and magic and everything we fill our days with.  But still I am the silence that lies beneath.”

So, that’s it… beyond the perception of this individual self, we are That…   J