Buddha in the House

The world is not what it appears to be. The sensei said it so simply, like it's self-evident. I blinked, once, twice, thrice and cast a sideways glance to my right side to see if Mady was similarly blindsided by plainspoken esoterica. She, of course, was not. She swims more steadily in the currents of philosophic oceans than I.

I had never been to a Buddhist religious service, indeed, wasn't sure Buddhists actually had hours of worship on Sunday mornings. But they do, at least in the U.S., where there is little else to do on Sunday mornings before shops open and professional sports teams begin their jostlings for more money and muscle and more muscle for the money. Me, I prefer going to museums early on Sundays. There are never crowds and the smatterings of other pagans is so soothing.

But I wander, as always. Back in the Jodo Shinsu Buddhist Temple, aka for some reason "sig," the sensei is speaking calmly and clearly and utterly without pretension about the unity of thought and feeling in the everyday world, the harkening of dharma in the mundane. This, he says, is the work of the ego, to obliterate itself in what we experience in our living rooms, our streets, our work places and our relationships with family, friends, and strangers.

Actually, he says none of this and maybe all of this. He does not use the word "obliterate." He does not mention our living rooms or streets or work places. He does mention that he can't go on a retreat because he doesn't have enough money. He mentions his home life, his own family. Before the service, I spot him outside the temple, enjoying the final drags off a cigarette before stubbing it out in the sand-filled urn. Enjoying the mundane, perhaps obliterating his ego in the tendrils of smoke that waft into the sullen Denver sky on a brisk gray morning in February. He has no acolytes trailing behind him as the Catholic priests did, but he does hold aloft a large book similarly, paying tribute, I suspect, to the collected wisdom of the Buddha within.

The world, he repeats, is not what it appears to be. Again, I glance sideways. This time Mady meets my look. She looks comfortable with the wisdom. I thrash in the shallows beside her. Whatever helps you to situate your ego in the material and the immaterial world, he suggests, is good. Maybe you chant. Maybe you meditate. Maybe you serve on the Board of your temple. You find some way to escape the limitations of your own ego. To become the Buddha, you see, is to lose your ego, as the Buddha did. I am reminded of my painful adolescent years, when I was utterly distraught with fear because somehow my faith, my Christianity, had fled my soul. And I would not be able to sleep, the little death of sleep, and so I would meditate upon the Greek sign for infinity as if I might transcend the shape to find some sort of understanding that would offer me solace and hope, maybe even save me from eternal damnation and hellfire if only I could grasp the essence of the shape, the sign, the symbol. And then the startling revelation, such as it came to my 14-year-old mind, that if ever I did manage to comprehend eternity I would disappear into it, become one with it.

But this Buddhism, this Jodo Shinsu Buddhism at least, is enmeshed and integrated with the concrete, the everyday, everywhere. The ego is in the world. The President is in the house. We transcend our ego by manifesting our ego, passing to the realm of pure consciousness by travelling the necessary path of self-consciousness, the small and rock strewn path gingerly picked over by the barefooted steps, mindfulness, awareness. Breathe deeply and keep your eyes not on the path but on the breath. The feet will find their placement. As Joyce unforgettably put it, "the ineluctable modality of the universe." Daedalus is also in the house, and the ego is in the world, and the world is not, I repeat, not, what it appears to be.

Then what is it. It is all around, ineluctably. The temple is not full, but it does have a full sense of welcome, and the people are so much friendlier and helpful than the Catholics of the great cathedral were. The sounds of children laughing float into the worship room from an adjoining space, where they are readying a feast for us, to be purchased after the service with the profits benefiting a charity of the children's choice. I am grateful that no one turns to me or shares the peace with me. I am left to determine my own place and peace and place of peace and my own ego in the world. I like that.

I could come again here. I could come again here for the thoughtfulness of it and maybe to learn what all the ornate features of the altar area are for. In some regards it is so similar: the written record of the revered one, the differentiation of congregational space and the priest's space, the plain versus the elaborate, the holy and the everyday, the singing and the incense. But here, following the sensei's talk, he opens for discussion and questions. No one speaks. I would like to know if anyone ever does. Or are these people, these congregants, just as passive as the Catholics, waiting for the truth to be told to them, waiting for deliverance, waiting for salvation, waiting for the end of the world...

No. We are waiting in line for the goodies the children in the next room have prepared. Waiting for joy and laughing in line as we do.