༺ Thesium ༻

Yes, so on that pilgrimage, trying to get over the divorce and find my way, you know, there came this amazing resolution. I felt some conflict between the different kinds of Buddhism I had been studying. On that journey I had been spending so much time in the Tibetan Buddhist world, there was this tremendously strong feeling for the Chenrezig practice in particular, that I wondered if I might find my place there. That’s the practice where you end up visualising yourself as the wisdom-being. You hold the wisdom of seeing things as they are together with compassion for everything that lives. You see these things as universal. I found it very moving and healing.

At the root of this practice is the idea of the Bodhisattva path. To vow to become enlightened for the welfare of all sentient beings. It is seen as the ‘Great Path’, the ‘Mahayana’ because of this great nobility in its aim. To rescue ALL BEINGS! Amazing, really amazing! You’re no longer practicing to help just yourself but to work towards rescuing all that lives. It still blows my mind, that idea. It really is a whole mythos in itself.

Anyhow, the schism between my early Catholicism and the scientific approach was largely healed by the Buddhist take on things. Still, there was some tension between what I understood of the types of Buddhism, the Theravada, the Chan, and the Tibetan ways of seeing things. I was still looking for a home, you see. Still wanting a single, clear thing I could completely commit to.

So, visiting Rajgir was a turning point. It is where the Heart Sutra happened, you see. The place where this amazing text is said to have taken place, the place where the great Bodhisattva explains how to practice. When I sat on that seat I felt that everything fell into place. All the moving parts of Catholicism, science, Theravada, Chan and Tibetan Buddhism, all rearranged themselves into a really useful and meaningful pattern for me. All the conflict went out of it right there. It was really an experience of tremendous awe. I needed truth as much as I needed devotion. Heart and head in accord. I needed enchantment and magic as much as I rejected fantasy and escapism. You see how tricky that is?

The devotional and obviously ‘religious’ aspects of these practices were being used as tools, you see. Just ways to get your system into a skillful place, a place where you could see very clearly and really express yourself. I mean, er, contact that part of yourself where you know that your suffering and everyone’s suffering is fundamentally the same. It isn’t a rejection of science. A lot of people seem to misunderstand this point. The Buddhist thing isn’t just swapping one set of unreal fantasies for another. It’s a different thing. It’s about cultivating a view of understanding together with compassion. To know things as deeply as possible whilst at the same time, being in love! Nothing short of being entirely in love as far as one is able. Not ‘in love’ with a particular person, but with everything!

It was both True and Good. I had found my mythos!