The Way You Cahanged My Life

Caitríona Reed

I was speaking to a friend, recollecting the first time that she had come to a retreat at Manzanita Village several years ago. She reminded me of how I had talked to her then about “giving up Buddhism,” and I reflected that, in different ways, I have continued to express my ambivalent relationship to Buddhism ever since—sometimes with an unrepentant eagerness that must be confusing to some students.

Buddhism, like a virtuoso’s technique, is often at its best, when it is invisible. The Buddha himself was not a Buddhist; and would have had no interest in you calling yourself one. One imagines that his only interest would be that you make good use of your best resources to achieve joy and freedom in your life—not freedom from imaginary restraints, but freedom to be unencumbered with preconceptions, in all the various circumstances you encounter. Perhaps the most concrete representation of the Buddha is none other than the virtuoso you allow yourself to be when you trust the multitude of inner circumstances through which your life is made known to you; as you move through them at last, with gratitude and ease—a Buddha rather than a Buddhist.

From the moment we are born, we begin to form constellations of identity. Throughout our life we absorb a multitude of influences—people and ideas. We search for connection—to feel safe, affiliated, known. As we come to maturity, spiritually or otherwise, we develop a degree of autonomy; yet we still continue to affirm, adapt and adopt a universe of ideas and people from whom we draw strength and understanding. We establish boundaries, conceptual as well as territorial, yet the shifting identities and affiliations endure. We are never without them. No doubt, this is something utterly basic to our primate nature, predating even our earliest human communalism. We are certainly wired to live among others, with all manner of affiliations, as well as antipathies, lasting as well as momentary.

On the wall in front of me, as I sit to write this, there are numerous photographs and images—of my teachers; my clan; my mother and grandmother and other family members, (going back several generations); my partner; lovers. There is an image of Krishna and Radha. There are pictures of a few well-remembered places; the French Alps; my childhood home beside the River Thames; the Dorset coast; a small sketch in oils made by my father in the Sierras when he was an art student. There is a young girl I photographed years ago on the beach at Mahabalipuram, in South India. On a shelf there is a Buddha head, a barong from Bali, a carved dog from the Solomon Islands, a fragment of the Berlin wall—cornerstones and details without which I can scarcely imagine my life. Is this my version of a parlor full of mementos, or is it an altar by which my life is mirrored?

The deepest change often takes place in our lives when we least expect it, and sometimes we don’t even recognize that it is happening until it has almost passed. The inner drive towards change—to relinquish what does not work, and to risk losing present truth for a deeper truth, yet to reveal itself—has a powerful momentum all of its own. It is never singular, nor is it ever completely expected. Circumstances push us along paths we could never have anticipated going, and towards destinations we have not yet dreamed .  .  .  . and perhaps we learn more about where we are going by knowing where it is we have come from, than from knowing where it is we happen to be; or from the plans we have made for where we hope to be going! So, we can rely on memory, as much as on anything else when we stand in awe at all that our life has become—in that miraculous and radiant moment when we know, with every cell in our bodies, that we are alive. Certainly, it could hardly be otherwise!

So much is made of impermanence and change in Buddhist teaching that they are sometimes held up as absolutes. Solidified into a fixed principle that can only weaken our already diminished sense of our roots. I want to say that I have trusted the changes in life—more and more so—because I am grounded in the ageless presence of my ancestors—not just in the lineage of my blood ancestry, but in all those who inform me by their precedent and example. The constancy of that presence allows for an ever greater sense of being in the right body, in the right heart, in right place, at the right time. How else would it be possible to face the challenge of bearing witness and maintaining integrity in this time of duplicity and destruction? Perhaps, if we are attentive, we can also hear the voices of the generations who are yet to be born, who call for us to become, in time, ancestors ourselves—steadfast, reliable, whole.
I have chosen to let the presence of my ancestors, as well as those who are yet to be born, be as real as the trillion cells of my body, a gift, weaving through me, part of an inexhaustible matrix of energy—the information of æons, the promise of life, given freely—as air is given to us on a spring day in the mountains, for example. It is a choice, a practice, an image internalized. Yet, if I insist that I stand alone perhaps I become just like the apocryphal fish who stubbornly denies the existence water. 

The world moves through us, inside and out, changing and multifarious. Some of our affiliations we choose, and some are given to us, forever or for a moment.  Meditation practice, spiritual practice, means . . .paying attention to everything! Whatever we call ourselves, we are Buddhist, Jew, Christian, Muslim, atheist, capitalist, socialist, straight, queer, white, black, non-Buddhist, non-Jew . . . all possible self-definitions are ours. We are implicated in all of it. We choose to honor ourselves, by declaring affiliation, and by so doing we also honor what is worth honoring. None of it will exempt us from responsibility. There are demons as well as ancestors. Again; our practice means . . . paying attention to everything! Otherwise, we reenact the blindness, rather than the wisdom, of our forebears; reverting by default to the internalized oppression of hatred, greed, fear . . . capitalism, racism, sexism homophobia, and all the rest.

Our practice is . . . paying attention to everything! listening to the heart, getting our information from reliable sources, informing ourselves, and choosing carefully what we put on our wall!
 
Caitríona Reed. July 6, 2001