Guest blog by Mike Jinji Wood
Our failures to act, our hesitations, can be the foundation for Bodhicitta, fuel that an aspiring Bodhisattva can use in order to relate to and aid other sufferers. I realize that I have had with me all along the tools I need to heal and be healed; I needed to wade through my sense of who I was to see its impermanence, to see how much of my suffering beyond the initial events was caused by my absorption in them; I needed to realize that understanding my losses as well as my missteps were important because they placed me among everyone else who has suffered. The particulars of my suffering need to be valued, and healed, but are important in so far as they help me understand what other people need to heal. As the individual is both unique and a literal container for the universe, so too the individual path of one at the beginning of the path relates to the idea of the Bodhisattva ‘s path over eons. Instead of eons, I am moment by moment trying to help, trying to use my flaws to my advantage by putting me in a position of understanding of what is needed within a wide range of suffering, developing bodhicitta and compassion from examining my errors and suffering and yet still finding myself in a fortunate position—because of them—to be of service.
This speaks to the heart of my intentions as one who has taken the Bodhisattva vow. Though I am only just beginning, there are already a series of questions I keep in mind, knowing that it is ok if I have no clue how to answer them on a given day. How do I express interdependence in my actions? Do I? Do I really wish to devote my life to service? Why? What are my intentions in taking the vow of Bodhisattva priest? What are the ingredients at hand at this first stage? What do I believe about enlightenment that will help me be useful at this stage? I believe all of these questions need not be, but can be, answered by how I see myself at the first stage of those vows. What does being at the first stage really mean if, in essence, it contains within it the highest of stages of abilities and realizations?
I have always been enamored of the idea of Beginner’s Mind. I take the Bodhisattva’s keeping his defilements handy, as it were, as Upaya for helping the widest range of life with which one will interact for their benefit. To know suffering in many forms can make one more useful, more able to understand the suffering of certain groups. While this is dangerous, at least in the beginning of the path—it is easy to delude oneself into thinking that one is getting drunk with drunks merely to relate to them in order to save them!—mindfulness of one’s flaws is key to understanding and being compassionate to the flaws of others. For me, Beginner’s Mind means that I just need to act, not worry about becoming anything. I can be at the starting line with other people who are also starting out—to rebuild their lives, recovery, learn to read, learn to accept their life and their responsibility for it. To me it means not being afraid to do the daily dirty work of paying attention, being mindful, noticing all the sentient life around you and taking responsibility for it. In those daily, seemingly mundane steps are the seeds for the magisterial heights reached by the Bodhisattva through eons of being of service and taking one’s vows seriously.
The process of practice, of acting out one’s vows with the understanding of their initial imperfection and ultimate emptiness, is what matters. The aspiring bodhisattva at the beginning stage still acts with a mindfulness of vow and a determination to serve; in that way his actions are interdependent with the most perfected of bodhisattvas.
I once signed up to read the weekly news and some books for the blind on a local closed circuit radio station. I impressed myself when I overcame the familiar anxiety in the parking lot that made me want to run away and blow off the audition. I went in, checked in at the front desk where a blind receptionist made a call to announce that the next appointment had arrived. I sat there, excited to have a chance to be a part of something so needed. As I sat there, the man who had auditioned ahead of me came out a side door with a scowl on his face. That was all I needed to deflate my aspiration. As he walked out the door, I followed him and we almost went through the door as one. I often wondered if she heard me leave, or if maybe for a moment she was alarmed that the next man to audition was no longer breathing.
I’m making no great statement of insight or of transformation, nor do I minimize my selfish and neurotic actions which affected other people to some degree. A good part of this is just the natural process of growing up, learning from experience and philosophically taking my head out of my ass. But today I see the Bodhisattva path in terms of action and dedication, whereas maybe twenty years ago I’d have been too enthralled by whatever mystical connotations I attached to it to be of use to anyone. When faced with a person who is suffering, thinking about how I may act as a Bodhisattva, or how worthy or not I am to be having such an aspiration, is foolish.
Just help.
The robe I wear, along with the brown kesa, announces that I am a fully ordained monk. But that doesn’t mean I’m halfway toward becoming a Zen master, or am a few steps ahead of other practitioners. If every moment is completely new, then I am always a novice. I have never been 55 years old on April 30 at 9:16pm. How can I pretend to have special insight into a moment that never existed before now? To see each moment like a novice, to greet the moment with curiosity and awe, to stand aside and let the moment reveal its needs, leaves little time for any version of the self to impose itself. How can we allow each moment to reveal itself, to teach us amateurs how we can help it benefit and care for all beings? We too often look toward the finish line in our ambitions and practice, but there is so much to do at the starting line. The more we step aside and see what is independent of our ambitions and biases, we notice that every moment is a starting line, the starting line.
