Prolifically Raw: Everything I want to know about the truth�

Friday, July 07, 2006

Everything I want to know about the truth�

�.I can learn from my four year old.

Her she is, nun, monk and a student wrapped in robes behind her.

We are at a �family� retreat together. She plays while I perfect my Powa or Transference of Consciousness at the time of Death practice.

When it�s time for my personal meeting with the great master who is here from Tibet, Jo wants to come along. She does not, absolutely does not, want to meet the great master. Too scary, she says. She just wants to walk along, hang out and wait for me.

My meeting is quick, no more than eight minutes, where all my instructions come through a serious translator. Rinpoche sits on his bed, jubilant and happy and focused.

I am caught, somewhere between the translators intensity, Rinpoche�s lesson and my own insecurity about how he is this wise all knowing being and I�m, well, me. I am one of thousands who study and pray and practice. I�m just one small woman at the foot of a great man.

When I come out, I am in a cloud.

Jo sits on the chair out in the hall and a nun is sitting next to her, trying to engage her attention. Jo's holding her charm pretty close though, chin tight. As soon as she spots me, she bolts off the chair and weaves a wide arc around the nun.

I take her hand, smiling and bowing to the nun.

We go out into the light of a low winter sun that isn't warm but is very bright. My mind tangles most of what Rinpoche said and I�m filling, fast, with doubt and anxiety. I think of the things I should have asked but didn�t, my ego unearths paranoid hidden meanings, I toss out inflation to keep myself from falling down the hole of self-loathing.

Jo leads the way, tugging on my hand.

�A puddle!� she calls out.

She lets go and runs down the gravel road, stopping at the edge of a giant puddle that reflects bits of sky, clouds and the tops of tall pines stabbing the heavens. *

�Can I throw rocks?�

�Sweetie,� I say, �let�s just wait, it�s really muddy.�

She dances around the puddle, doing little twirls, skirt lifting and falling again.

�Please, Mo-ommmmm,� she says, �I won�t get dirty, oh please, please, please.�

My watch shows that we have less than ten minutes until the next teaching, it�s going to rain again and just what did Rinpoche mean when said that bit about resting? What does that mean, rest?

�Mom!�

I look at her and she looks at me and I surrender, hands up.

She does a little jump and bends down to pick up a handful of stones. As fast as she has them in her fist, she's letting them fly and the smooth surface is broken. Ripples race over the puddle, dozens of small circles.

She giggles and goes back for another handful.

The puddle stills and she tosses the next handful.

The surface is chaos, yet again.

More delighted giggles.

She's off for yet another handful.

I blink and blink and blink again.

It�s right there, my mind is the puddle, my thoughts are the ripples.

My mind goes still.

It rests.

That�s what he meant.

There are just four more tosses of muddy stones, four more chances to see the puddle become still and then be churned up.

Four, the sacred number of the breath, the elements, the seasons, the minds, the angels and the cardinal points of the magic circle. All creation manifests itself through the number four.

Four years old.

There is complete satisfaction in her clear blue eyes and Jo wipes her little hands on her tattered princess dress.

�Okay, let�s go.�

She folds her fingers into mine, mud on both of us now and she leads us away.

*Escher, Puddle