I no longer have a Path To Follow.
Perhaps it is the result of aging, of my approaching the end of my physical presence.
- I have noticed that some common themes have entered my life as I entered my 80’s
- So many things are compressed, particularly time and space.
- Months ago, I read a quote from The Pearl Garland Tantra and it has become a daily theme of mine.
- It is an ancient text: “I no longer have a path to follow, I have gone to the other shore, I am all alone, but I am connected to everything.”
- It has become an often-repeated intention of mine: “May I find that I no longer have a path to follow; may I recognize that I have arrived at the other shore; alone, may I see that I am connected to all things.”
It is a theme I have noticed showing up in Thay’s words.
- I hear him saying, “you no longer have a path to follow”, “you have arrived at the other shore,” “you are connected to all things.
- All is compressed into a deeply engaging now.
- For me, it is an invitation to enter into deep intimacy with the world. To embrace a deep engagement with all things, with all beings, with all my friends, with you.
I no longer have a path to follow.
- So much of our practice references being on a path.
- Perhaps that is true in the historical sense; minutes follow minutes, hours follow days, days follow days.
- But in a perspective of the ultimate, I have no more path to follow, my feet need not move, I have arrived.
- In the practice, the path seems like a tightrope; I want to lean neither to the side of grasping nor the side of aversion; I am moving forward to some goal.
- In my experience, I am also standing still on the tightrope, I no longer have a path to follow; this is IT.
I think Thay summed up his deep engagement with life when he wrote his book, “The Other Shore.”
- He wrote as one who has fully experienced what it is to stand on the other shore, of having arrived.
- His experience of the other shore comes out in the Heart Sutra, as he translated it. This is what it is like. This is IT.
- You are standing on the Other Shore, and all you need do is experience it, open yourself to the reality. You have arrived.
- That is an experience I aspire to; I sometimes get a small taste of it.
I think that for the ancient Buddists who wrote those words of The Pearl Garland Tantra, it was an ultimate retreat into oneself, into one’s physical presence into one’s body.
- While it was a retreat, at the same time it represented an immersion of inner clarity and bliss.
- It was combined with a seamless and unconditional immersion in the world.
- There is no need to seek for anything else; it is all here; this is IT.
Rilke echoes for me both the aspiration and the formula for attaining what it means to have no path to follow, to arrive at the other to shore, to realize I am connected to all things.
- “You see, I want a lot. Maybe I want it all: the darkness of each endless fall, the shimmering light of each assent.”
- For me, Rilke describes what it is like to experience absolute surrender and total engagement.
- Like Thay, Rilke wrote from the other shore, from an experience of having no path to follow, of feeling connected to all things.
I think of this when I walk in my garden when it is -5 degrees, or when I (more often) look out the windows.
- It is all here: Winter and spring are one; the flowering plants are there under the blanket of snow; the rotting debris of last fall is part of it all.
- My garden may seem asleep, but it is also wildly blooming. Everything is happening right now.
- Rumi had this to say about my garden: “And I don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous.”
Rumi may be writing about my garden in an historical sense, but, for me, and maybe Rumi, the ultimate, timeless / spaceless aspect is there as well.
- The ultimate is there when I talk to Molly who, like me, was born 81 years ago.
- It is a small nod to the ultimate when I tell her that, for me, she is 81, and 55, and 90, and 23, and 35. All here and now. That is how I experience her.
All this is a hint of what I think it is like to no longer have a path to follow, to stand on the other shore, to (alone) feel connected to all things.
- It is what I aspire to experience; what I sometimes experience in a small way. It is a good reason for me to practice.