In Memoriam GMC.
One day this summer, standing in one of the temples of Phugtal Gompa hidden deep in the Zangskar mountains of the Himalaya, I asked my companion, Nathaniel Tarn, American poet and participant on my cultural tour to Ladakh, whether he was a Buddhist. Nathaniel was inspecting the extraordinary 12th century paintings on the walls, paintings he had laboured hard and with difficulties over the hills to see, and said ,"Its the nearest to what I believe to be true. For me it's just a matter of living out the life".
And so I was made to recall this subtle Zen phrase which then hung around, haunting my imagination, for the rest of the summer.
We had major problems on trek this year: many participants were sick, some had come without adequate physical or mental preparation and airline strikes forced us into repeated changes of itinerary. James Crowden and I felt much relieved after we said goodbye to them and then spent two days with the yogins on a short retreat. Our troubles were not over however. It took us three days of early morning journeys to the airport and many attempts at bribery and corruption to get on the plane from Leh to Delhi. In Delhi too more airline trouble meant we had to change flights and do a slow return via Karachi, Cairo, and Paris, missing one more connection and losing our luggage temporarily on the way. What should have taken two days took seven.
Had I been alone, such a journey would have been very testing. I would have felt alone, morose, claustrophobic, neglected and anxious, fussing about details and challenging myself every inch of the way. Having the staunch companionship of James made it almost pleasurable and we saw some interesting things at Karachi, at the worst moments doing a silly Doug and Pete act to maintain our morale. But the point of all this is that the phrase "living out the life" came back to me as a repeated meditative refrain.
Wasting time in offices, having our wait-listed tickets rejected, enduring the total chaos of the Air India reservation system, waiting for our luggage to fail to arrive in Paris; every time I thought "Hey - this is just living out the life. Let it pass." It became a valuable refrain, a mantra refocusing experience into the exact moment, peoples faces, the turmoil of ad hoc travelling, the explosive little rows that came and went in office corners. It all passed by, living out the life. Time passed, mini-event followed mini-event, plane trip after plane trip, Homage to Allah on Air Pakistan, hindi music in India, the clipped tones of the BA captain nonchalantly cruising the business men into Heathrow on our last leg. Ml the same somehow. The same taste, as the yogins say. Just life passing. One thing after another, nothing to get up-tight about, different companions, attitudes, air hostesses, ways of serving soup, no alcohol on Islamic flights, holier than thou, and the lovely French lass who gave us Air France bus tickets to get from Orly to Charles de Gaulle - when she shouldn't have. Un peu mechant, n'est-ce pas?
All the same; the practice of not good, not bad, evenness. Shin fu watching the train move with his luggage still on the platform. It all works through. Life passes, time passes, day follows day. Sometime it will all stop.
There's a melancholy here perhaps. What of the splendours of passionate commitment? The urge to succeed? The vital elan that wins a race? Well, that's part of it too. No one said that living out the life should be done without commitment and passion. Mother Theresa picking up the dying in Calcutta's streets, night after night, living out the life.
There's a secret here. To use Shifu's phrase, the mind "goes down" when it becomes self-centered. Sometimes as I watch the days or hours passing I am filled with a sense of fear, life's sands are not unlimited like those of the Ganges. They are few and flowing down the hourglass rapidly. I get a sense of panic, of things not achieved, of nostalgia for past faces, past times. But this is all a referral to self, to my mortality, a self pity before the face of oncoming death.
Put that aside - instant sunshine, wherever, whenever. The dullest moment becomes alive in its own actuality. Driving back to the Karachi hotel fatigued by traffic noise and fumes, how wonderfully the painted buses glow. At Cairo airport a passenger slept through the stop instead of disembarking. What a joke. What does a two hour additional delay matter? Another opportunity for contemplation.
And it works. You can meditate in a seat on a plane. Just let the mind go. Things go on around one, nothing to do. The breath settles, tranquillity comes. Why worry - you get there sometime, this year next year, sometime, never. And why not? Is it OK to end it now? In the silence of the mind, why not? Everything's the same, just living out the life.
How does a Zen master live out his life? In the clarity of sameness he goes his way with helping hands, offering all he has for the well-being of others. In this there need be no time, no nostalgia, no worry about the future. He or she does what must be done in the moment of its arising. The action, coming from the empty heart of clarity and relying totally on a natural insight, just comes into being, goes its course and travels on.
The master is beyond premeditation. His or her mind is attuned to a silent readiness which becomes possible only when it is unclogged by predispositions, prejudice, defences, biases. That is why such action is an expression of the human truth that the root of the mind is undramatic love. Outward looking, seeing the needs in the face before one, living out the life. Nothing special.
When we reflect on such matters we perceive our need for training because the need for it has become clear. Far from the idealisations and false comfort of New Age spirituality we attempt to stand clear of the ego and see the sameness, the unmoving similarity of every moment. From here we can see the pain of others and compassion arises in our offering. Where there are blocks, there must the work be done.
