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As we continue our series on Jack
Kornfield’s book, After the Ecstasy, the
Laundry, Chapter 12 is entitled, “This
Very Body, The Buddha.” He retells
the story of Siddhartha Gautama’s six-year spiritual quest when he tried to
deny his body through the practice of fasting and extreme asceticism. One day, he almost drown from exhaustion, and barely had the strength to pull himself up on the side of the river. All he could do was simply roll over and gaze up at the sky. It’s said that at that moment,
he remembered being a young boy and sitting under a rose apple tree in his
father’s garden. That moment of
stillness in nature had created this sense of awe and wonder, and his heart became at rest and at peace with all things.
The story is told that, at that moment of remembering, he realized that
his six-year spiritual quest had been about fighting against his body and his
mind and the world around him.
The
Middle Way is a concept described in many ways in
Buddhism. Within the context of this
story Jack Kornfield points out that the middle way of being is somewhere
between struggling with whatever arises and becoming lost in the flotsam and
jetsam of living. At that moment,
Siddhartha started to awaken, he opened to the suffering and beauty of life as it is, and simply rested in the peace that arises naturally out of an awareness of all that is.
About that time, a young
woman, named Sujata, walked by who was the daughter of the land owner where
Siddhartha was lying down. She saw this
emaciated being, and decided to offer him a bowl of rice milk that she was
carrying. Siddhartha accepted it gratefully—something for which his ascetic
friends would later despise and shun him.
Yet, Sid now felt refreshed, with a new perspective, and then went to sit
beneath the Peepal tree (later known as the Bodhi Tree because Bodhi means
awakening), where he would have this experience of being at rest, at peace, with
whatever arose in his mind, in his body or in the world around him. It was then that he became The Buddha (translated as The Awakened One).
In a teaching by HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, one
of the great Tibetan Buddhist teachers of the 20th century, he
describes this everyday practice in the following way:
“Simply
to develop a complete acceptance and openness to all situations and emotions,
and to all people, experiencing everything totally without mental reservations
and blockages, so that one never withdraws or centralizes into oneself. This produces a tremendous energy which is
has been locked up in the process of mental evasion and a general running away
from life’s experiences. Clarity of
awareness may, in its initial stages, be unpleasant and fear inspiring. We can see these uncomfortable responses as
part of the process of breaking down our habitual emotional reactions and
judgments.
“Don’t mentally split into two when
meditating, one part of the mind watching the other like a cat watching a
mouse.”
In this type of meditation, there is no introspection concentration, instead
there is a continual opening of the mind and the body to whatever is. We can experience the whole universe and “us”
fluidly as a part of the whole, as open and unobstructed, everything mutually
interpenetrating. Drop the project and
simple experience all things, including our sense of self, as transparent and
free from obstructions. Even the
judgments and habits and emotions that arise are transparent and
ephemeral. It is merely our confusion or
desire to make all things solid and permanent that cause a false sense of
separation.
When
we remind ourselves again and again, to practice open up, to see where we are
stuck, to stop fighting, and start accepting, it is then when the entire
experience can burst open into a Technicolor display of living. The paradox is that things can only begin to
change when we fully accept what is.”
