Volume 1, Number 1 (Spring, 2000) - Click here to return to Newsletter index
Renewing Bodhi Mind
by Zuiko Redding, Resident Teacher
This is the season of the Buddha's birth and of Christ's death and resurrection. For people on both spiritual paths it is a time to celebrate rebirth.
This is an exciting time. Small leaves unfurl from the soil, eagerly reaching toward the sun, two leaves becoming four leaves, then six leaves. Seeds and sun and soil turn into leaves and flowers and fruit!
This is a good season to renew our Bodhi mind. Bodhi is a Sanskrit word meaning "awake" or "to wake up." Bodhi mind is the mind that sees the impermanence of this seemingly permanent world. We realize with both mind and body that, no matter how hard we try to hold onto them, things change. No matter how much we want it to stay, spring becomes summer. We also see that nothing exists by itself - all things are interdependent. When the sun warms the moist soil, small leaves pull themselves up from it, not before.
This mind is the foundation of our practice. When we bring up Bodhi mind, we are able to see the world just as it is, coming up new and vital in each moment. This is not a world that we should ignore simply because it is constantly changing and it arises from the processes of interdependence. The world is ephemeral but we should plant soon if we want to eat corn in August! Bodhi mind reminds us to be right here, to pay attention, to be mindful. Each moment is gone as quickly as a snap of the fingers. Wake up! You're missing it!
Bodhi mind is not something magical or mystical we have to attain, a treasure to be sought. It is nothing special, right here with us all the time. We don't need to practice it to become better at it, like we do with baseball. We only need to use it.
Bodhi mind is the basis of a life in accord with the world just as it is. Seeing the transience of the world, we realize we can depend on nothing, and we stop clinging and stand up straighter. We stop being bent and warped by our egoistic desires. We are no longer like vines curling our tendrils around the things we desire, suffocating and killing them. We relax and become straight and supple like bamboo and, like bamboo, we can weather the fiercest storm to stand straight and cheerful in the sun afterward.
We become more joyous. Because we are able to let go, we are able to experience our lives wholeheartedly.
We can simply be with the flowers in spring without the gap that comes from wanting them to be forever, dreading the heat of summer . . . We say goodbye to red and yellow tulips and enjoy the corn growing tall and green.
Credits
Published by:
Cedar Rapids Zen Center
P.O. Box 863
Cedar Rapids IA 52406
(319) 247-5986
e-mail: crzc@avalon.net
