ApresZen

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.

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.