119 Talk

 

Days passed.

On a weekend near the end of April the master told me he would be out of town of town on business.

"Would you give the dharma talk?" he asked me. "A lot of stuff has been coming up for you."

I said I would.

The talk would be only my second and in the week to come I read over my journals and contemplated possible subjects. On Sunday I began my talk by mentioning briefly the topics I had rejected.

My anxiety in ritual?

No, I said, I had spoken often enough of that at our practice group meetings the past three years.

Crying?

Only three things made me cry, I said—one, the constant and endless killing and war in our horrible murdering human world, two, my gratitude for having heard the dharma and getting the opportunity to make myself a better man and, three, the poignant, precious, and profound bursts of beauty which dozens of times each day suddenly and unexpectedly illumine the dark cave of my thinking and brooding and wake me. Enough on that.

Confession?

Enumerate my past sins—my cruelties, my infidelities, my abuse of alcohol and drugs?

Boring.

My awakening and how I had come to the Way?

Done that.

My year in heaven?

No, I said, that was all I, I, I, I, I, I and in the thirty years since so far as I knew I had not freed nor saved a single sentient being. I wished I could say that I had, I said, but really I did not know how.

It is very very difficult to help other people, I thought I had learned.

Or is it?

I could just as easily say that it's not so hard to help other people—that in fact it is simple.

You just do it, right?

Now which of those two statements is true?

I did not know.

On a clear moonless night from the middle of rural Iowa one can see about 1500 stars with the naked eye. There are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, a giant spiral galaxy with a diameter of 100000 light years or 10 quintillion miles—1 with 19 zeroes. The spiral arm of our galaxy spins around its axis at 650000 miles an hour. The Milky Way speeds outward toward the limit of the known universe at 1.3 million miles an hour. There are a minimum of 50 billion galaxies in the known universe. Some galaxies contain a trillion stars. There are a minimum of 70 sextillion stars in the known universe—7 with 22 zeroes.

70000000000000000000000.

Modern astronomers make this number intelligible to laypersons by analogy.

To wit:

"There are more stars in the known universe than grains of sand in all the beaches and deserts of the earth."

Imagine—

One star is our sun and around it revolves our tiny speck of dust.

Earth.

There are 6.7 billion earthlings alive on earth.

Each day another 350000 are born and each day 150000 die.

Fifty million deaths a year.

To help us make sense of this mystery we apply labels—male, female, black, brown, red, yellow, white, gay, straight, old, young, handsome, ugly, beautiful, American, Iraqi, Esquimo, Jew, Christian, Muslim, nontheist, atheist, capitalist, socialist, rich, poor—we and they, us and them.

We inculcate beliefs:

"On my honor I will do my duty to God and my country...."

"I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of...."

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the...."

"O say can you see...."

"In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful...."

"I take refuge in Buddha...."

"Hail, Mary, full of grace…."

From label and belief arises difference; from difference conflict; from conflict aversion, desire, aggression, resentment, anger, violence, fear, hatred, killing, war. Thirty million people died in WW1, fifteen million of them noncombatants. As a result of the Russian Revolution and Stalinism ten million? Twenty? Forty million people died in WW2 and the Holocaust, twenty million of them noncombatants, six million of those Jews. Twenty million as a result of the Chinese Revolution and Maoism? Two million dead in the Korean War.

One to three million died in the Vietnam War, 58000 Americans.

One to three million died in Cambodian Revolution.

In Iraq—40 to 50000? 600 Americans?

I mentioned only briefly the means of defense—10000 nuclear warheads, the poisons, weaponized plagues.

But this seemed too abstract.

Empty.

I cited specific horrors.

Ivan the Terrible, I had been told by a friend who was a historian, earned his nickname in part by his practice of gouging out the eyes of ninety-nine of every one hundred of his prisoners of war. The hundredth he blinded in only one eye so that this one man could lead his blind comrades, linked hand to shoulder in single file, back to their homeland. Ivan didn't kill them so perhaps his nickname is undeserved. Though blind, they lived.

Ivan the Merciful.

The British invented particularly gruesome tortures for their inferiors the Irish. They applied a paste made of gunpowder and pitch to the heads of the Irish and set fire to it and into the ears of the Irish the British poured molten lead.

I cited:

Napalm—and the famous photo of the burning girl.

Bouncing Betty.

Pol Pot and his torture of pregnant women—so terrible I did not describe it in detail.

The recent war in Sierra Leone where according to news reports tribal militia cut off enemy ears, noses, and lips.

Lips!

Not all horrors occur in war.

I told the story of the man I had read about in the paper who punished his tiny daughter, just a toddler, for wetting her pants by putting her in the oven and roasting her. He confessed his crime.

"Please, Daddy, let me out!" he said his daughter cried. "Daddy, please, let me out!"

"No."

When I first moved to Omaha in January of 1980 the news in the local paper was of a couple high on drugs who had kicked their newborn baby around like a football in their backyard until it was dead.

Then they stuffed it in the trash.

I recited the refrain of the song by Martina McBride popular at the time on the country music charts:

Love is the only house big enough for all of the pain in the world.

Love is the only house big enough for all of the pain in the world.

Love is the only house big enough for all of the pain.

Had I been able to sing even just well enough not to make an unpleasant noise, I would have sung it. Then I read this passage of the ocean and the wave from a book by Thich Nhat Hanh:

When we look at the ocean, we see that each wave has a beginning and an end. A wave can be compared with other waves, and we can call it more or less beautiful, higher or lower, longer lasting or less long lasting. But if we look more deeply, we see that a wave is made of water. While living the life of a wave, the wave also lives the life of water. It would be sad if the wave did not know that it is water. It would think, Some day I will have to die. This period of time is my life span, and when I arrive at the shore, I will return to nonbeing. These notions will cause the wave fear and anguish. A wave can be recognized by signs¾beginning or ending, high or low, beautiful or ugly. In the world of the wave, the world of relative truth, the wave feels happy as she swells, and she feels sad as she falls. She may think, I am high! or I am low! and develop superiority or inferiority complexes, but in the world of the water there are no signs, and when the wave touches her true nature¾which is water¾all of her complexes will cease, and she will transcend birth and death.

Finally to conclude my dharma talk I told the story of the recent walk my grandchildren and I had taken to school. The morning of Friday, April 2, had been perfect—a cloudless, sunny sky, a gentle, cool breeze—an absolutely gorgeous spring day. Katy, who would be three at the end of July, and I walked Dylan, who would be seven at the end of August, to his first grade class at Mockingbird Elementary School five blocks away. Dylan, neatly dressed, hair combed, backpack squarely on his shoulders, lunch box in his hand, proudly led the way. I followed several steps behind. Another ten steps behind me strolled Katy, dawdling, pausing, looking at this, staring at that, stopping to pick up a feather, stopping again to inspect an ant, turning in circles, awed by one thing after another, barely able at all to keep moving forward. Finally I had to stop and wait for her. She had come to a complete halt in the middle of the sidewalk and had tilted her head way way back in order to look straight up into the air. I looked, too, and I did not see anything.

"Come on, Katy."

Silence—

"Katy!"

No answer.

"Come on, Katy."

Not even an acknowledgment.

I looked up.

Again—

The sky was empty.

Nothing.

I walked back to where Katy stood. She smiled a big smile. She beamed. She raised both of her arms straight up as far as they would go above her head and extended her fingers, her head still tilted back, her gaze directed skyward, and loudly Katy proclaimed:

"Bluuuue!"

There were no questions.

In the days to follow I received several reviews. Dean reacted just as he had to my first dharma talk.

"So grim!" he said.

I apologized.

Edward, I surmised, felt the same. He just gave me a sad smile, gently put a hand on my shoulder, and slowly shook his head. I don't think the gesture meant "no" exactly, more like surrender—

Concession.

Alison had a different opinion.

"Bob, that was awesome!" she told me.

"Thank you," I said.

Three times that morning Alison repeated her praise to me and each time it made me glad. Later in the week David emailed to tell me how much he had been moved by what I said. He thought I had achieved just the right balance of horror and joy and he loved, he said, my story of Katy and the sky. David told me also that he understood why I had included the material on ignorance, delusion, violence, cruelty, and war. He understood its necessity.

"It's important to be reminded why we practice," David said.

His email had come as a relief.

A blessing.

I worried that perhaps I had been too negative.

Days passed.