'
The sermon for Jun. 09, 2003 is: a cranky boddhisattva 3:01 p.m. On the way to work this afternoon, I ran into some Buddhist monks at the gas station down the street. (Which reminds one of the koan, "What does one do if one meets the Buddha on the road?" -- that is, if one is given to being reminded of koans.) The majority of the monks were sardined into a Volkswagen and looked rather impatient to get going, which seemed discordant with people intimiately familiar with the wheel of the Law and the cycle of rebirth and that sort of thing. One adventurous monk had left the sanctuary of the Volkswagen and was smiling bewilderedly at the disinterested cashier inside the station; this monk looked resplendent in his loosely draped robes of soft scarlet, saffron and mellow yellow. As I walked past him to fill my pockets with candy, I said, "Avalokitesv�r�," for no reason at all; for some reason I suddenly remembered that this was the name of the Lord of Light, the Buddha of grace; the name means "He who looks down with compassion." The monk's smile broadened and he nodded; then he turned back to the attendant and started asking for his change. I filled my pockets with candy, and wondered why I remembered that name. And suddenly I remembered: once upon a time I met a group of monks from Tibet, though not at a gas station; they were making a mandala, a painting out of sand, blue and bright yellow and red and black sand, garnered perhaps from beaches from distant planets. I remember the sound of many people clanging pots and pans together. And at one point the monks asked everyone there to make this vow: "I vow that I will not enter nirvana until all the million million beings of all the million million worlds are free of the cycle of rebirth." I bought my candy and gas, got back in my car and sat in my comfortable seat behind the driver's wheel of suffering. And I thought to myself: "I shouldn't have made that stupid vow. I should've entered nirvana when I had the chance. A million million beings on a million million worlds all getting off the merry-go-round of desire and despair is going to take a hell of a long time." If this was a short story, at this moment I would've looked up to see the the monkmobile chugging forward like Juggernaut, and perhaps I would've seen that monk again; and perhaps he would've given me that bewildered smile again, and hesitatingly made some sort of gesture; perhaps one of us would have said, "Avalokitesv�r�," and perhaps that would meant something revelatory and life-transforming: a moment of enlightenment, if you will. However, this is just an anecdote, something that happened to me this weekend, trivial like everything in my life; and though moments of enlightenment and understanding may happen outside of fiction, I doubt I have the perception to actually notice them. So I'll end this anecdote with some koans: What is the colour of thunder? What is the sound of one hand clapping? What should one do if one meets the Buddha upon the road?  
|
