A river runs through it

I can still see those smiles. Well, it was only yesterday, but I think it’ll be a while before I forget them. I hope so.

Off for a hike, I stopped at Subways to buy a picnic. Trying to shelter from the heat under a straggly tree were a mother and three kids. I asked the mom if they wanted a sandwich, and then asked again in poor Spanish once I realized she didn’t speak English; whereupon she volunteered her oldest, an 8-year-old, to come inside with me. Despite my gentle encouragement, this little girl chose white bread sandwiches, zero vegetables, three packets of chips, and, then, shyly, “y uno para mi madre?” “Si, claro!”, so make that four, and 2 giant Pepsis. I then suggested the little girl beckon her family inside to eat as it was so hot, so in they came, this exhausted looking mother and her windblown children. As I left, all three kids gave me the biggest smiles and waves. And it kind of broke my heart.

I have no idea of their background or status but I have every idea of how beautiful they are and how they deserve only the best shot at life. How full of energy they were, like kids everywhere. How innocent, brave, and living in the moment. I wanted to hug them all and bring them home.

A river runs through it

There’s a weird trend of people criticizing empathy at the moment, but whatever self-serving arguments may be made about policy or practicality, one fact remains: every life is as precious as the next, however socially insignificant it may appear. This family has exactly the same vivid inner world as anyone else – the same hopes, fears, capacity for happiness, and Buddha nature. From the inside, every life matters completely. We disregard that at our peril.

Later, walking on Mountain Lion Pass, I couldn’t stop thinking about this small family and how little I could do to help them. How one lunch was nowhere near enough, though I hoped they saw that they were welcomed by at least one stranger in this strange land. Then, sitting to contemplate the river that ran alongside me, I saw it.

I often contemplate my life is just one bubble on the river of life – I appear for a time, just enough to gather people, a name, a nationality, a job, a story – and then the bubble bursts. Every one of my countless lives in the ongoing river of samsara is fragile and fleeting, yet in it I have invested everything as if that’s all there is. This is completely missing the existential context: I have had countless bubble-like lives already, and there are countless more waiting to emerge from the river of my root mind once this one pops.

This time I was seeing whole worlds of bubbles. There was a large tumult of bubbles in the middle, like a busy city, and plenty of smaller communities. Other bubbles were breaking off and making their way down the river alone, some as voluntary travellers, some as involuntary refugees like this family. There were kerfuffles of activity all the way up and down the river, in the annals of stories present, stories past, and stories yet to come. And I noticed that a very small fraction of the bubbles had broken off entirely to join a quiet eddy nestled close to the bank.

What is the point?

One could easily think, “What is the point?” What is the point of being one bubble after another on the endless river of life? Not that we have a choice. So how can we make it, well, at least a little less pointless?

I am going to use this as an excuse to drop this new, excellent podcast right here to let Gen Rabten and Kadam Adam answer that. Definitely worth taking the time to listen to this.

All the bubbles

Instead of just my own existential situtation, I was now thinking about all the bubbles – the big cities, the smaller towns and villages, those who wandered far, those who stayed put, and those who found their unexpected way into the temporarily safe eddy of a spiritual community.

The river is beginningless and endless, as is the continuum of our root mind and as is a Buddha’s omniscient wisdom. I was thinking of our enlightened lineage Gurus from the time of Buddha Shakyamuni – and before – as one with the river itself, accompanying us in life after life, from their perspective mixed with our continuously residing minds (if only we could introspect long enough to realize this!)

Within both the cities and secluded communities, there were big bubbles and there were small bubbles. Wherever you go in human society, even in Dharma Centers, there are always seemingly big people with important roles and seemingly smaller people who follow them.

Fact is, though, the biggest bubbles come and go just as fast as the smallest ones.

From the point of view of death, our carefully maintained hierarchies become rather strange. Death is very final – once any bubble is gone, it’s gone, and who can say what kind of bubble will pop up for that person next. Therefore – and talking to myself here – it doesn’t matter so much how many external things we are in a position to do to help Dharma flourish. If we don’t each gain the ability to realize and identify with the river of our clear light mind, or at least secure the ability to carry on our Dharma practice in our next bubble-like life, this has still been a momentous waste. Any external role is secondary to whether Dharma has actually transformed our mind. And there is a lot to do, our life is inordinately precious, for how is a bubble in an endless river of bubbles ever supposed to meet The Three Jewels again?

No one is separate from our mind

I also contemplated how, if I become the river by realizing my continuously residing mind, all bubbles will be part of me. The definition of enlightenment is:

the inner light of wisdom that is permanently free from all mistaken appearance, and whose function is to bestow mental peace upon each and every living being every day.

When mistaken appearance ends, others are no longer dualistically perceived to be outside of our mind, fundamentally separated from us. Therefore, enlightened beings can benefit each and every living being every day, this help no longer an occasional moral effort but a very imperative of their enlightenment. They don’t even need the intention to help – it is the very nature of enlightenment to be helpful, just as it is the very nature of the sun to shine. I think that my teacher Venerable Geshe Kelsang, for example, was many different things to many different people – his ability to benefit, to inspire, and to liberate appeared (and appears) in dependence upon our own views of him.

What is the moral of this tale?! Perhaps to see through the pointlessness of making this single bubble comfortable or impressive versus the huge point of buying other bubbles lunch while simultaneously striving toward helping each and every one of them every day. This family in Subway … I cannot protect them from every hardship. I cannot arrange all their future lives. I don’t even know where they are today. But I can let their smiles inspire me to hasten toward enlightenment for their sake.

*Wrote this when I still lived in the Wild West … nine months and a lifetime ago.