Vassa (rains retreat) begins on 21st July, and for this occasion I would
like to share this reflection with you, as you have helped me tremendously
on this path to awakening, by teaching me more about myself, by pointing
out my weaknesses and mistakes. I am most grateful to you for this. May we
all grow in spiritual strength.
Vassa Reflection 2005
The Bodhisattva leaves his luxurious life out of angst of being
disillusioned with the world. He is disillusioned, seeing how youth must
decay, how health must meet ill, how life only ends in death. He does not
plan to become a prophet, not even a teacher to others, but to seek the
answer to his own angst. After seven years of superhuman struggle the
Buddha discovers the liberating truth and after seven weeks of celebrating
his awakening by way of various meditations, he gives the first discourse
to the five monks. Having become Buddha, however, like water flowing
naturally from on high to lower ground, he spreads his liberating message
for our benefit. He is a being of joyful liberation bringing the same joy
to others. This is the momentous event that Asalha Puja celebrates.
We who are yet to be liberated, yet to awaken, see the Buddha in
awe and admiration: how a man can give up so much for the sake of truth and
liberation. In many ways, we have given up much of what others still cling
to, worldly things as well as otherworldly things. Yet we know that our
journey has only just began, infant steps as it were on this long golden
road to liberation. When he look back, we can see many others plodding
behind us, even many more frolicking in the unwelcome wastelands bordering
the bright path, oblivious of the dangers there.
We shout in alarm trying to warn them, like the wise and
compassionate father in the parable of the burning house of the Lotus
Sutra, but few actually hear us, fewer still heed our voices. Many are hurt
or lost on the wasteland, and we rush to them out of knowing compassion,
giving what little help and comfort we can to them. It is as if a tsunami
has hit the whole island, leaving only the bright golden road untouched due
to its elevated position.
Then we realize that we too need to continue our journey lest
another tsunami washed us away again, even farther from the path. This is a
discomforting thought. The more we seek to move on, the greater the pain we
feel, having to leave so many of the suffering and the lost behind. We ask
around for ways of helping others; no, of understanding our own selves that
we may help other better. Most of the fellow travelers simply plod on like
silent legless shadows lost in the light of the bright road. Some give us
silent stares, and seeing we bear no valuables nor beauty nor strength,
only move on, whispering and nodding with understanding amongst themselves
in their own band.
As we help the stricken, we find ourselves all alone. We are
necessarily alone as we attend to the pains, the wounds and the delusions
of the stricken. There are too few of us to work together in bands or even
to converse with one another. We have so little time to waste as we see the
stricken worsen in their sufferings.
And yet as we bring solace, comfort and health to the stricken, we
do not find ourselves tiring. On the contrary, we find ourselves recharged
and brighten, even as we fix our attention to the task at hand. It is truly
painful only when we watch the suffering and are unable to uplift them. As
we help, the helped too brighten with joy and their eyes begin to open so
that the see the path and the way. This joy fills us with greater strength
so that we help even more others fallen by the wayside.
As we go on attending to the helpless, we notice they begin to
look familiar, like we have met them before, or we have known them so well.
But this is all forgotten as it were, and we do not talk to one another. We
have to go on tending to the untended and the lonely.
As we go on tending to the helpless, we find ourselves slowing
moving on, too, as many more tire from the journey and fall along the way.
As we feed the hungry and slake their thirst and comfort their ears and
limbs, we find ourselves moving on, almost effortlessly as it were. Only
when we stop to look around, we seem to stop in our own journey.
The loneliness of helping others is almost unbearable, but the joy
and zest that pushes us on are just as strong. Then we feel a warm gentle
hand on our shoulder, and a voice telling us we are working right, only do
not falter, but to keep moving. And we too gently touch the shoulder of the
next helper with the same message.