In the Lap of the Buddha
While I struggled to get out of bed this morning I read an article by Jack Kornfeld about Bodhisatvas during the time of this pandemic. I awoke with crippling worries of my elderly father or mother contracting this virus and perhaps dying now, of all times, and of all things to end a long life with. My fears of my adult sons out in the world making their way through these dangerous waters of jobs, relationships and loneliness. Compounded with the overall suppressive weight of sadness and anxiety pronounced currently in our world on every screen I look to. Per the Jack Kornfeld Bodhisattva article we are to take those fears, worries and anxieties and lay them in the lap of the Buddha. “Allow them to be carried by great winds across the sky” as the Ojibwa elders state. Just the simple act of reading these words softened my shoulders and opened my chest. However, then, as a Bodhisattva, you are to turn back to the world, towards sickness, deaths and fears and absorb them, take them in, allow them to penetrate you from all angles. Accept them from others in an attempt to offer relief and to radiate back generosity, clarity, steadiness and love.
This is the time for love, for beaming love to others — across the divide of social distancing and sheltering in place. To our trash truck driver with his quick smile as he carries away our refuse. To the brown bears that have awakened and are prowling our mountain. Now is the time for my fears for my parents and children to soften and open my heart to those same fears in others. My friends jobs, my neighbors loneliness, strangers lives and losses. Recognize this in them, behind their masks, beyond their rubber gloves, isolation, dismay and confusion. At this moment, this exact moment, keep my heart, our hearts, open with compassion.
I feel caught in non-doing. I want to do something; I don’t have a working sewing machine (plus hate sewing) so not making masks. I am supporting and buying from small businesses only, I am buying gift cards of local massage therapists, barbers, and restaurants. I have cut my hours so my teammates that have lost so much income can gain some extra. I am trying to keep my in-household family safe and well-fed, house cleaned and sheets fresh. I’ve made a few hollow financial donations. But what I can do, my “best and most noble aspiration” is to shine my light. This morning I had to dig around through my anxiety in the knotted sheets of my bed to find that light — but it lit as soon as I threw back the covers and placed my feet upon the soft wooden floor beneath me, like the flip of a switch. As the belly of the mother that the Buddha shone through — a lamp in the darkness — shining the light of love to all in my presence, across the distances and in my immediate periphery.
We were born with consciousness, it is our humanness. It is in our genetics to respond with love, to infants it is a gut reaction To elders it is a tenderness with each birthday I cross. Tears are expressions of love, as is laughter, we can’t help but love. Open our compassionate hearts, ingest the pain and suffering of our neighbors and respond with love, then in turn, placing all in the lap of the Buddha.
*a Free Write in response to Allison Stones: “The Sun Above”