ApresZen

Peach Blossoms Part 2
Berkeley, CA

Last night John was the pinch-hitter for his fellow teacher, Rachael. Initially, I was mildly disappointed because I wanted to get a sense of what she was like, but that disappeared quickly.

As the meditation session began, John repeated the same Peach Blossom koan that he introduced last week. I realized that he did that before with the Master and Are You Awake? koan. He may not even recall that he repeated them, and for the life of me I don’t know why it could possibly matter. What does matter here was my reaction – I was pleased to revisit this koan and see how it had changed in the course of a week. Turned out to be quite a different koan!

Sitting with my breathing for a bit, I listened as John spoke of thoughts being transparent, and how – if we pay attention – we can see right through them. In a way see past them. In that moment I realized how apt those “thought bubbles” are in cartoon comic strips. I imagined my thoughts to be bubbles – popping and disappearing almost as quickly as they appear.

I noticed in those moments how much surprise there is with these bubbles. Surprise not only with the content, with the images, phrases, whatever, but also with how rapidly they disappear and reappear with brand new content bursting again almost as soon as they are formed.

From this I took some solace. There is something about the impermanence of these thoughts that allowed me to realize again that suffering is also impermanent. A “this too shall pass” sort of thing. Paying attention to the transparency of thoughts, as John suggested, was very helpful.

And then I found myself sitting with that word “intimacy” that John introduced last week as another term for enlightenment in the old days. Slowly, without any effort on my part I found myself sitting with images of every lover I had been intimate with. I noticed how ratcheted down, how concrete “intimate” became in that moment, but I let go of judging, and just went along for the ride. One by one these women’s faces came into my awareness. Not so many lo these thirty-five years or so, I also noted as they were emerging one at a time. And each face became a peach blossom. It was quite lovely actually. It was very sweet, and had a healing quality to it.

As each face slowly, effortlessly transformed into a blossom, I noticed that each face and each blossom was also transparent. Was it a “real” face, I found myself asking. Then I realized that the answer was, yes, it is as real a face as any face. “Face” is just a thought too. And I noticed that my face is a thought, that I am a thought just as transparent. I appear and disappear. I am seen and not seen. I am remembered and forgotten.

I could feel myself moving in behind these thoughts, behind these faces. What was at first easy and very much without effort became a bit more daunting.

Suddenly, a shadowy figure of a face - almost an outline – of the face of the priest who assaulted me when I was a child came into my awareness. And I felt a strange kind of choice point. Could he become a peach blossom as well? A thought bubble that emerged said that my encounters with him were the polarity of intimacy, the deepest most shameful, most secretive shadow of intimacy. And then I realized that this shadowy form of a face was no more and no less just a thought. Like all the other faces. His face, already fairly transparent to begin with, became a peach blossom as well. It became even more transparent, and then seemed to merely dissolve.

Finally, I was left sitting with just a peach blossom. As I did, I noticed that this too was transparent; this too was just a thought. I tried to look past it. I had the sense of being taken back into peach blossom time. Before it was a blossom, it was a bud. Then in that moment I held secrets differently. I thought of a secret as nothing more than the possibility, and then the inevitability of a blossom emerging.

Afterward:

And now sitting here the morning after I am holding peach blossom time a little differently. I am holding the thought of the blossom flowering and slowly becoming a peach. I am aware of the peach ripening, of becoming sweeter and sweeter, until it falls from the tree and returns to its roots.

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Peach Blossoms
Berkeley, CA

Last night while meditating at PZI, John offered a koan about peach blossoms and enlightenment. The story is about a pilgrim walking along a path and comes upon the sight of peach trees in early bloom across the valley. The poem went something like this:

For thirty years I’ve been looking for a swordsman
How many times have the leaves fallen
And branches grown anew?
After once having seen the peach blossoms
I never have doubts anymore.

John spoke of the swordsman as someone or something that cuts away delusion. Later, during the talk, he spoke about the possibility of peach blossoms entering into our lives any time and anywhere.

Before the talk, though, I found myself meditating and focusing on the swordsman more than the blossoms. I chose not to make too much of that, and just notice it, and let whatever was happening just happen.

And what happened was both wonderful and mildly disturbing at the same time.

It was almost as if I could feel someone cutting my arms and legs. As if an incredibly sharp sword, or knife, was at work making lines in my skin, cuts, wounds - perfectly straight cuts one equidistant from the other. There was no swordsman, only the blade cutting me. And then I noticed the blood. It wasn’t gushing or anything like that. The blood was rising to the surface, slowly, as if it were coming from a deep place, like groundwater rising in the soil. As this was occurring, I felt my face begin to twitch a bit. I chose to just notice this, and not try to stop it, or to manage it. Gradually, as the blood seemed to flow, the twitching seem to recede, until I felt a kind to peacefulness, a feeling “settled” in a way that felt new and familiar at the same time.

From these images I noticed how I hold suffering and pain – my own suffering – as a way to cut through delusion. I noticed the deep-seated belief I hold about the liberating parts, the opening up, that seems to come as a result of suffering. Then I noticed a feeling of profound regret. The phrase “thirty years” began to resonate for me. About the amount of time I spent in the Bay Area either looking for the swordsman, or wielding my own sword.

I sat there with those cuts not knowing what to do. Not having anything to do. I sat there with the sensations of my own suffering, and allowed that to be whatever it was. I allowed myself, maybe for the first time, to begin to see how many wounds I carry are self-inflicted. Oddly enough, this permission to see the wounds as they are allowed me also to see that not all of them are self-inflicted. I realized that I do make up the world in each moment, but I also realized that the world makes me up too.

That right there would have been enough. I’d have gotten my money’s worth had the evening ended at that point. It didn’t, though.

John then suggested that we begin to let go of rational thought and just keep company with the peach blossoms, and notice what occurs. So, I did.

In a way that is difficult to describe my arms and legs became like branches of a tree. They still retained all the usual qualities one associates with human limbs, except on these limbs where the cuts were, blossoms began to emerge. At first the petals were white. A red spot was at the center of each. (Is this how peach blossoms look in the natural world?) Then very slowly the petals began to absorb the blood rising out of the wounds. They became like natural bandages, and began to turn almost crimson. As each blossom turned completely red, a new one appeared and absorbed more of the blood. Eventually, it began to feel as if my arms and legs were completely covered with these blossoms.

And then and even stranger feeling, sensation, image – I’m not sure what – came to me. The last blossoms to appear retained their original, white color. It was as if the other blossoms sopped up all the suffering, like the way good Italian bread takes up all the spaghetti sauce on a plate.

Later, during the talk, John spoke about the word “enlightenment”, and how in the ancient languages it had the meaning of intimacy. I began to have an inkling of what that might mean. He also said that some of the old ones would speak of enlightenment as being robbed. I immediately went to the concrete and tried to make meaning of all that stuff that has been stolen from me of late. But today, now, the day after, I am feeling a little lighter, feeling that the peach blossoms have robbed me of some of my memories and my forgetfulness, robbed me of some of my wounds.

Being robbed is a peach blossom. So is intimacy. And so is suffering.

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