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As in the opening photograph, a flower bud is a living example. Encased in the bud is the Life being prepared to show itself; that life is being nurtured and protected until time for the unfurling. Likewise, we speak of this potential that is not appearing for the conditions have not been prepared for the appearance. As the life in the bud, we in Life can rest in knowing we already live in the not-yet and the not-yet in us. We can cooperate in the protection and nurture of the unborn-within. Letting go is, then, not an unnatural process, something we impose on Life, and it is not something we can push. Patience, here, is being-with-Life. We wait, expectedly, even when we do not know what we wait for. We often can feel this something being gestated within. Then, we may sense a season to act, to apply kindly will to the birth of the promise. Or, rather, that to-be-born is suddenly born, and we may know only in hindsight. The more we trust this process and see it work itself out, the more easily we relax with the process, and so are one-with it.
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For me to go to Dharmata Maine, to receive the blessing of other Christs, of other Buddhas, was a letting go for me. This did not happen suddenly. Rather, being able to receive this fellowship, in contrast to past teaching, was a result of years of turning to the Light and away from the, though sincere, mis-teaching of the past. In stepping into Maine Dharmata, I was stepping into the fecund ground of Grace, an open field of Dharma possibilities, of Gospel potentialities. And, I found, what Christ means to me was in the mandala of Buddha, even as a Buddhist might find the Buddha at the altar where is served the Eucharist of Christ.
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Another word and sense that arose during the time of silent meditation, that last evening ~ “Christ.” Here, I was, in a Buddhist gathering, and I felt bodily a strong sense of what came to me as “Christ.” And this "Christ" was at-home. Now, someone else there may have had the same sense, and it pass from Silence into body-mind as “Buddha.” I believe that entirely possible. I, also, believe it possible that Christ and Buddha transcend time and space and can be present anywhere persons gather in the name of either, and so I cannot exclude the manifestation of Christ and Buddha at the same time, place. I, also, recognize the mind cannot grasp what either "Christ" or "Buddha" means, and to invite both or one into manifestation is to receive the manifestation without intellectualizing. Simply receive and be thankful for the gift of Presence as it appears, now.
As regards Christ, the word "Christ" points to the atemporal, aspatial mobility of Presence. As Christian Scripture has it: "Where two or three are gathered as one in my name, I am present in the midst of them." Yet, to know Christ, one does not know how to conceptualize Christ. As at the Table, one receives the Christ, embodied in bread and wine, and no theory of Christ or the Eucharist is to come between Christ and the one receiving.
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