Saying For Today: Let us let our love reach out farther than we dreamed possible - for it can.
Sunset Over Damariscotta River
Damariscotta, ME
She, showing frustration, spoke, "I took a vow to act with compassion, and I'm trying to be compassionate. But I seem unable to be compassionate to some kinds of people, and that bothers me a lot." Said the Sage, "The wind blowing is wind. No movement of air, no wind, no blowing. Wind is wind blowing."
Does the wind decide to blow? Does the wind feel a need to blow? Does it try to blow? Does it feel obligated by something outside itself to blow, or it is failing something or someone? Does the wind follow a code commanding it to blow? How about you?
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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I am the living bread that came down from heaven [lit., the skies]. Whoever eats this bread will live forever [deathless], and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.
*Jesus, Gospel of John 6.51 (CEV)
A Zen teacher was heartbroken when her son died. At the funeral, she cried copiously. This emotional response surprised her disciples. They asked, "Didn't you teach us that everything is illusion?" Glaring at them, she said, "If you don't understand that each tear I shed saves countless sentient beings, you know nothing about Zen."
*Ken I. McLeod. Reflections on Silver River: Tokmé Zongpo's Thirty-Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva.
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Jesus and the Zen teacher reveal the compassionate heart, for they are compassion. To be compassionate means we are compassion.
The seed of compassion is within us. Compassion is our natural birthright. Our practice is to nurture the seed.
In time, we discover ourselves showing compassion spontaneously. We find there is no thought of needing to be compassionate, or we ought to be compassionate, and no one acting with compassion. There is no space between the giver, the giving, and that given - there is only giving.
Our practice leads us to give ourselves for others, and to give means, regardless of the given, we are given. The giving is not a loss of self, it is an expression of self. This self means the self beyond diminishment is not the sense of self, or ego. In the Jesus story, Jesus does not lose anything by surrendering to a crucifixion. He even chose that to serve a higher purpose than mere physical survival. Through apparent diminishment, the reach of his life was enlarged: "And as for me, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself" (Gospel of John 12.32). Hence, what appeared to be weakness, even criminality and guilt-on-display, was all but such - it was love for all to see. And, today, in the Jesus story, many see the love that meets us from over two thousand years ago.
The Zen teacher crying at the funeral was drawing all people to herself. In her tradition, she was crying for the world, realizing her suffering was the suffering of all beings. She was responding to grief as a bodhisattva, not as one seeing her sadness as her's alone. We experience a fresh freedom when, from within our grief, we recognize it as the only grief there is - the same for everyone who has, is, and will grieve loss. Then, our heartache and tears reach out and touch the world.
That in the Zen teacher and Jesus is the same compassionate self. We all have this same potential, for we are one self. Our compassion can touch the whole world, past and present and future. Let us let our love reach out farther than we dreamed possible - for it can.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and notation of title and place of the photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
