At 12:14 AM 7/11/99 -0400, you wrote:
From: "Paul Roberts" <netpaul@...>
I'm a bodhisattva here to wake up myself and the world...and have as
much
fun as I possibly can doing it. :o)
NetPaul
----------
From: Carol James
Hi Paul,
According to the dictionary, a bodhisattva is an enlightened being who
has
chosen to forego nirvana in order to save others? Is that who you see
yourself as? This definition doesn't sound very enlightened to me,
because
it's hard for me to imagine that an "enlightened" being would feel the
need
to "save" or "rescue" others. What is your definition of a bodhisattva?
Seeking to understand,
Carol
Hiya Carol,
I'm a big one for pulling the alice in wonderland trick of using words to
mean exactly what I want to, regardless of how others have used em before.
I try (not always successfully) to slather enough contextual clues around
my word so people can "get" what I'm saying.
Of course the entire race does that with language all the time...and
William Safire writes a wonderful column weekly in the NY Times sunday
magazine exploring just such morphing of language over time. :o)
Anyway, to your question: I'm not a buddhist, and do not have a set of
belief bubbles around the idea of re-incarnation. It may be so...then
again it may not. (Seth / Jane Roberts, for example, has an alternate
paradigm without karma or time as a linear phenomenon). So right away I
don't fit into that part of the Buddha's belief structure...or Seth's
either. Franky, make me no matter either way. :o)
Here's what DOES matter: I am awake. Not perfect...not done with life and
it's unfolding and it's lessons...but definitely awake. And once, in THIS
life, I was definitely NOT.
From the time I heard others speak about becoming awake...about
enlightenment if you want to use a classical mystic term, I desired same
with all my heart...and knew that it was the freedom from the prison I
experienced myself as living in...this sense of having been once eaten from
the tree of life, and lived in the garden...but since having eaten from the
tree of knowledge of good and evil, and having been ejected from same (to
use a western rather than an eastern metaphor).
Carol: This definition doesn't sound very enlightened to me, because
it's hard for me to imagine that an "enlightened" being would feel the
need to "save" or "rescue" others.
I'm sure you know that as human beings we can do ANY activity from a place
of bondage or a place of freedom: working, eating, fucking, raising
children...the whole deal. It's not what we do, it's who we are when we do
it (or DON'T do it). Any activity done from a place of freedom, joy,
aesthetic preference is WONDERFUL. The very same activity done from a
place of bondage, duty, need SUCKS.
So I have had to work / play through the human bondage part of this
particular game, the compulsive rescuer, if you will, in order to
deconstruct a clusterfuck or two around the need to rescue. But happily,
there was (and is) a pure creative impulse at the center of that thing that
has remained once the slag of human neurosis had burned off. So the
ability remains (increases actually) and the JOY sings itself as a song in
my veins, as the Tao of my life unfolds itself and presents me with IT'S
opportunities to do what Hermes did: go down into the underworld and bring
people back. When I do it in the flow of Tao, it is effortless effort, and
a helluva lot of fun to boot...and profoundly satisfying as I watch, and
yes, even midwife another sentient being into the place of re-connecting
with non-dual awareness and absolute freedom, sometimes for the very first
time.
And not being an outcome junkie about it (as I surely was during earlier
days) I can simply relax throughout the whole deal, knowing that it's
really not ME doing anything...it's the Tao, or spirit, or whatever you
like to call it.
A good pointer to this kind of model would be the kind of "each one reach
one" thing done by the 12 steppers. Someone who's moved from drunkenness
through the dry drunk stage and finally to truly joyful sobriety makes a
wonderful "sponsor" to use AA terms. Yet (having watched this
process) the sponser (if s/he is mature in this game) doesn't make the
mistake of taking the weight of salvation for the other on his shoulders.
To use Richard Bach's terms, he's a messiah, not THE messiah.
Carol: What is your definition of a bodhisattva? Seeking to understand.
Of course not everyone who "wakes up" to the nondual awareness pointed to
by all the mystic traditions (thus making me quite certain than this is a
human universal in play here) is going to have the same abe-ish wanting to
wake up others too. Some folks have OTHER wantings...and don't we need
more awakening beings who get their greatest sense of value fulfillment and
vocation running our government and corporations too...and doing a zillion
other things as well.
But for me, the definition of bodhisattva, and the reason I so define
myself, is that this desire, to participate fully in my own awakening and
that of the world as well, is my deepest and most profoundest wanting (to
use abe-ish terms)...which of course (laughing) is exactly why it has come
to manifest itself so in my life...false starts, missteps and all. And abe
is so right on saying that the FEELING I get when doing this work / play is
my very best clue to whether or not I am simply flowing, or straining to
make something happen.
What an exquisite dance that is!
Did that help?
Love,
Paul
