Bodhisattva

“When the Dharma has not yet satisfied the body-and-mind we feel already replete with Dharma. When the Dharma fills the body-and-mind we feel one side to be lacking.”

- Dogen


So I was in San Francisco a couple weeks ago at the Godzilla Film Festival they had up there. That was fun. I got to hang around with Tsutomu Kitagawa who played Godzilla in the last three movies and got to meet Jerry Ito and Hiroshi Koizumi the stars of Mothra as well as Akira Kubo the star of my all time favorite Godzilla movie Monster Zero (now known variously as Godzilla Vs. Monster Zero and Invasion of the Astro Monster). I was the on stage interpreter for the evening, a job I’d never have accepted except for the fact that the guy they’d hired to do it flaked out on them. But I didn’t do too bad — surprisingly enough.

So anyway, while in San Francisco I decided to go check out the famous San Francisco Zen Center the place where the famous Shunryu Suzuki famously brought real Zen practice to America for the very first time and famously gave the lectures in his famous book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. It was a nice place. They had like a bazillion people there to listen to a famous lecture by one of the famous guys who was famously a student of the famous Suzuki Roshi.

I really wish I could recall the name of the famous lecturer I heard. Steven something, maybe*. But in his talk he brought up the quote from Dogen I stuck on the top of this page. It really helped me out in a kind of a weird way which I thought I’d tell you about.

OK. See. I’m at this Godzilla Festival and they’ve got all these dealers tables there selling various Godzilla related junk. Now I’ve seen all this junk before. I practically lived in a heap of it for the past decade. But one item there really caught my fancy. It was a two and a half foot long reproduction of the bug monster Meganulon from the movie Rodan, The Flying Monster (Toho, 1956). It was a very cool looking item, amazingly detailed and scary. The monster is basically a giant cockroach type thing which Rodan, the giant pterodactyl, eats before he gets sick of eating bugs and decides to try some Japanese cuisine if you know what I mean.

So anyway, people expect me to be really into the toy collecting thing, but I’m actually not. But this one was way cool. So I asked the guy how much the big bug was. He quoted me a price which was way more than any sane person would pay for a toy, but also way less than this particular item would have cost from any other shop. So I was thinking how much I wanted to get the toy bug and also how much my wife would scream at me when she found out how much I spent on a toy bug not to mention how bad it would look if anyone knew that I, a Zen Buddhist priest, had spent a butt load of money on a big plastic toy bug.

And I also noticed something else. There’s this feeling you get when you come across some item you think you just have to have. It’s the feeling of “one side lacking,” the feeling that there is something missing from your life. The feeling of one side lacking doesn’t just appear when you encounter some object of desire. It’s always there. But we tend to identify it with various things at various times. In this case for me it was a big plastic bug. Other times in my life it’s been other things. Maybe another object like a certain guitar, or a better job, or something more abstract like true love or a “soul mate.” At times I’ve even identified this feeling of one side lacking with the lack of Unsurpassed Supreme Enlightenment (still do from time to time).

When you notice this feeling of one side lacking, the common response is to think that if only you could fill that lack with some particular thing, the lack would go away and you’d be all better. You’d finally be complete. I found myself feeling just that way about the plastic bug. I knew better, of course. But there it was, that old feeling, as real as ever.

See, the thing that Dogen understood which most of us don’t get is the fact that this feeling of lack is just part of what it is to be a human being. Something lacking is our normal condition. It never goes away. No matter how hard you try to find just the right something to fill up that feeling that something’s lacking you cannot ever possibly succeed. You will always be incomplete. But that’s just one way of looking at it.

When you try really hard to fill up your lack it only leads to no good. See cuz plastic toy bugs are a really dumb example, I know. But I’m a really dumb guy. Some people will strive for stronger and stronger sensations. If sex with one woman (or man, or goat, or what have you) got close but didn’t quite do it, maybe sex with two or four, or sixteen or 4, 000 will do it. If marijuana just about does it, what about crack? If one hundred dollars doesn’t quite solve everything, how about a zillion dollars? If telling your boss off doesn’t do it, what about if you killed him and then took out half the rest of the office just to make sure everyone knows you really meant it?

The list goes on and on. But no matter what you do it will never erase your feeling that something is lacking. Because the feeling that something is lacking is what you are. (Interesting side note: That last sentence is so unusual that the grammar check on my computer refuses to believe it is proper English)

Upon hearing Mr. Famous Zen Guy quote Mr. Dogen I was suddenly struck by something I’d known for a long time. No matter whether I bought that stupid plastic bug or not, the feeling of lack would not go away. You’d think a Zen guy like me couldn’t possibly forget such a thing. But you’d be wrong. Old and well established habitual patterns of thought are tremendously difficult to eradicate. I don’t believe anyone ever succeeds completely no matter how well they can play the Enlightened Master role, which is why I have no patience at all for guys who do that. You’ll make a bit of headway as your practice matures. But you’ll always slip back now and again. Maybe the only progress anyone really makes is to cultivate the ability to get back on track just a little bit quicker each time it happens. Spiritual Master type dudes who want you to believe otherwise are scam artists.

That feeling of lack had been bugging me a lot for the preceding couple of days. I kept wondering how I could be both fully aware that whether I bought that stupid bug or not it wouldn’t make a bit of difference in solving my existential problems and yet still be troubled by recurring thoughts that I would surely regret it if I didn’t buy the bug now and then later on decided I really wanted it.

Anyhow, a weird thing happened when I heard Mr. Famous quote Dogen. I felt a tremendous sense of relief. I no longer felt I needed that bug toy.

See cuz remember I said the feeling of lack was just one way to look at things? The Buddhist way is to also understand that you never, ever, ever lack anything. The entire Universe and all of time and space is yours and yours alone. It sounds like poetry or metaphor, but it’s really not. The trick is to be able to see both sides, to hold two absolutely mutually exclusive and completely contradictory views at the very same time. You might put it this way: You are so complete that you do not even lack for lack. I mean God couldn’t be Everything unless He was also incomplete, since if He lacked for incompleteness He could hardly be Everything now could He? God couldn’t be that something out there somewhere who possessed everything unless He was also you right here who could really use a Snicker’s bar just about now and who wondered if maybe somewhere God existed.

It takes a lot of steady practice to get any kind of grip on this. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can get it in an afternoon (see here for a rant about that) or even a year. And don’t let anyone tell you that a getting a big flash of the view that you are everything before you’re ready to understand what that means is gonna make you all better. Until you’re ready to hold both views, you’re better off not seeing the other side. Otherwise you end up identifying your feeling of lack utterly with that flash you had. All that ever does is make you stick forever with the guy you think gave you that glimpse so that maybe someday he’ll let you have it back. It’s a good scam for phony baloney Zen Masters. But no one who’s really serious about Buddhist practice would be interested in such things.

Just knowing that you possess everything will not keep you from desiring stuff. Nor should it. It’s important not to desire too much. But it is impossible to avoid desire entirely.

My desire to have the toy didn’t go away after I heard the famous Zen Master quote Dogen. I wanted it. But I did not need it. Nor did I have the least bit of worry that I might regret it if I didn’t buy the silly thing. When I heard someone else at the festival asking about buying it I didn’t fret a bit that he’d get it instead of me. In fact, I was happy to let it go.

But, here’s the funniest bit. At least to me. At the very end of the festival when all the dealers were packing up I happened to see that the guy who was selling the bug had put away all of his stuff except for the bug. Now I’d been looking at this thing for the previous couple days, so I’m sure this was deliberate. Anyhow I took the bait, went up to him, asked if he could still sell it and I bought it.

It was funny to me because it wasn’t what I expected to do. It no longer mattered a smidgen if I bought it or not. And maybe that’s why I bought it. Or maybe I bought it so I could write this article. Or maybe I bought it cuz I wanted a big plastic bug. And maybe I don’t care much which it was.

But I decided to make the bug part of my altar. Many Buddhist altars have a demon as well as a Buddha on them. So Meganulon will play the role of the demon on mine. That is, whenever I get around to putting an altar together.

-BW

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