Wesak

Happy birthday, Buddha. Today we celebrated Wesak, the festival of Buddha’s birth. This is a very precious time when the entire community — adults and kids, parents and those without children — celebrate together. In most forms of Buddhism, the festival of Wesak centers on children. This meant far more to me than a mother's day brunch, and I ate cake before noon.

image by Sarah Jaensch

Calling all you hungry hearts

Last night we went looking for ghosts. We walked through the forest with softly glowing lanterns, singing this poem.

Calling out to hungry hearts.
Everywhere through endless time.
You who wander you who thirst.
I offer you this heart of mine.
Calling all you hungry spirits.
Everywhere through endless time.
Calling all you hungry hearts
All the lost and left behind
Gather round and share this meal
Your joy and sorrow
I make it mine.

We passed by trees and watched as closely as air. We were there as part of a local Jizo-bon festiival. Jizo is the guardian of children and the patron of all beings caught in the uncertainties of life's transitions. The festival is traditionally held in the third week of August, shortly after Obon. It is a festival for children. The ghost-seeking came after dinner, cookies, and a puppet show.

We found a few ghosts, hiding there in that spooky forest. Tadzio even took one by the hand and led it away. I was terribly proud of him. He is still only a four-year-old, and the ghost he found looked a bit like it was out of a Butoh performance. It was hiding in the brush with tangled hair and ghost-white face, shrieking and huffing. Przemek and I both found ourselves thinking of the experimental theater of Jerzy Grotowski.

I counted six ghosts total. Part of the festival is to give the poor creatures some relief from their suffering. You find them and feed them and try to bring them back to the temple. If you think of them as a psychological rather than a physical state, hungry ghosts might be thought of as people with addictions, compulsions and obsessions. Greed and jealousy lead to a life as a hungry ghost.

We finished the night with fireworks. This morning we had breakfast together and studied last night's lantern, musing over our interesting and magical night. I can't say I was entirely comfortable with it, but I liked the poetry and I would do it again.

Calling all you hungry hearts
All the lost and left behind
Gather round and share this meal
Your joy and sorrow
I make it mine.

Images by Spring Night plus here and here.

gardening

When you have a lot of understanding and compassion, you are no longer afraid of suffering. It is like being a good organic gardener, you are not afraid of the garbage, because you know how to transform the garbage. I get so caught up in my worries, in my despair, in my jealousy, and my fear, and I lose this insight.

L'Arret

I've been thinking a lot about my parents and grandparents. About the sorts of things they worried about,and how their worries, struggles and habits live in me. My ancestors; full of pride, ignorant, impractical, guilty, quick to shun, suspicious of gifts given freely. They were worriers, and a lot of other things. In some ways they were lovely, generous people and in other ways they were very destructive.

My grandfather, my mother, my father, and me. We struggle during the day, we struggle during the night, even in dreams, and we are not capable of letting go and relaxing.

If we are not struggling, we are running

And that is my heritage.

So I have to learn the art of stopping, L’arret.

If I don't learn how to stop, then my children will carry me and continue to struggle in the future. It seems to me that stopping is the best thing I can give to them.

Happy Continuation

Last night, my three-year old came to me while I was cooking dinner and said, "Mama, can I live forever?" It may seem early for him to be struggling with mortality, but I remember (sadly) being like that when I was his age. We are a family of worriers. This may have been too philosophical for a small child, but I dove into the full Buddhist philosophy of birth and death. I told him that in some ways, he will live forever. I said that the moment he was born was not the moment he began to exist. He has existed before, in his mother, in his father, in his ancestors. We do not not come from nothing. We are a continuation. It's like the stream of water on Earth is a continuation of the cloud in the sky. And the stream of water has not been born. It's only a continuation of the cloud. He is like the cloud and it's impossible for a cloud to die. A cloud may become rain or snow or ice or water. But it is impossible for a cloud to become nothing.

He may not have understood everything, but it made him happy and gave him some relief from his worries.

These ideas are better described by the Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh:

In our mind, to be born means that from nothing you suddenly become something; from no one you suddenly become someone. That is our definition of birth. But looking deeply, we don't see anything like that. A cloud has not come from nothing. A cloud has come from the lake, from the river, from the ocean, from the heat. A cloud is only a continuation of something. When a cloud dies, and you say the cloud "dies," you think it means from something you suddenly become nothing, from someone you suddenly become no one. But if you look deeply, you will see that is is impossible for a cloud to die. It's possible for the cloud to become rain or snow or ice, but you do not have the power to kill a cloud, to make the cloud into nothingness....

Everything you think, everything you say. everything you do has already begun to continue you. It is only a continuation; it's not a transfer of something from there to here. And we can make it possible for the continuation to be happy or be pleasant.. Through mindfulness, we can make sure that our continuation is good and beautiful.


Here's to a happy continuation.