Responses for Tasshin
My friend Tasshin offered this up the other day:
to which I answered:
Rather than dash off quick replies, I figured I’d rather entertain extended reflection here.
How would I articulate what Dharma is to my younger self so that I might hear it?
Knowing what a brash, arrogant, bullheaded misanthrope I was, if possible I would sit down with myself one to one and address one by one any objections to the four truths, eightfold path, and dependent origination as they occur while radiating the brahmaviharas one at a time or all together as spontaneous bodhicitta, as I sometimes do now with folks I meet and am invited to teach.
At some opportune moment after initial defenses drop, I’d look myself dead in the eyes and ask,
“Just what is it staring out of your skull right now?”,
and point if possible to this unborn freedom.
That would startle me out of my self-involved conceptual stupor, certainly, stirring up initially this Great Doubt which digs inexorably all the way through.
As for writing, I was attracted by that already done by masters of the past. I can’t claim to improve on what already caught me, years ago.
As I sit here and listen, what is my older self whispering across time to me now?
Exercise patience and kindness with my own and others’ faults. Fervor and urgency are for oneself and one’s own afflictions, and that held entirely in love and faith in oneself and all beings as Buddha.
Let go of your plans. You may die today.
Rest right here in lucid recognition and appropriate action arises of itself.
Quit fussing.
I love you,
Always and forever.
You were never,
Not even once.
Free from before my beginning,
Unbound after my ending,
Not going,
Not coming.
From me,
To myself:
Quit running.
How would I explain the Dharma to someone deaf, mute, and blind?
In many ways this might be easier than communicating via gesture, word, and example. It would take some time, perhaps, but I don’t doubt the whole of the Great Matter and its shattering could be well conveyed through touch.
Demonstrate grasping, pushing, pulling, and freezing, with my own and their body, and convey through tracing with fingers and poking how this process goes right to the core of all unnecessary distress. Place their hands on my face at junctures to show emotions.
This would be a great art project and possibly excellent teaching aid for those who aren’t deaf, mute, and blind!
Ideas, ideas.
What is taught?
Suffering and its ending.
Highest happiness.
All devices, designations, and descriptions from all those actually awake are for this.
Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammāsambuddhassa
Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammāsambuddhassa
Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammāsambuddhassa