Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2014 19:52:30 -0400 (EDT)
From: Brad Page
Subject: the nap
A delightful time it is to nap of an afternoon such as today in Pittsboro following a lunch provided by my friend Tim as part of his huge package of gift food. Granola with milk and raisins and yeast and a cut up kiwi fruit, slowly eaten after reciting the Five Reflections and the Four Blessings my teacher, Gentei, sent me in the hospital. What a lovely and grateful exercise it has become before each meal. It has caused me to deepen my awareness as I eat a meal.
A number of years ago I returned to Charlotte after a 7-day retreat at then Brooks Branch Zen Center, Pittsboro and now dedicated in 2007 by the late Joshi Sasaki Roshi (passed this spring at 107 years) our Master and creator of this Rinzai Lineage in America, Sosen-ji Zen Center, and in the world as the North Carolina Zen Center, the child of founders Sandy Gentei Stewart and Susanna Stewart through their great efforts on behalf of all sentient beings and especially the members of this Sangha (community of monks, nuns, students and lay people).
I lay down in my apartment then and dropped into a deep sleep only to awaken in the unlit rooms hours later. As I lay there I became aware that I was watching myself sleep and dream, and that I was hovering and observing the dreaming in angel like levitation, as I slept on the bed on my right side. For a time I watched then slowly my body responded and it’s shifted to an interior view and I sat up on the side of the bed, putting my feet on the floor.
The room and the whole apartment was lit in an eerie gray-white light that illuminated every corner, every detail. I walked into the living room and stared about in some consternation. I just knew this was not supposed to be on some level. Walking back to the bedroom I touched a flawed spot on the wall which had taken on a greenish cast.
Then I became frightened and burst into tears such as I had done as a small child. Suddenly I felt alone and helpless in the presence of a great frightening force, so this could have been a mere dreamy recollection of my early childhood called forth by the hours of stress and driving as an aftermath at the Sosen-ji 7-day retreat;as it could be at this moment some steriod-driven compulsion to write and share as I heal from my recent surgeries. Who knows for sure?
I called my teacher, Kozan Gentei back in Pittsboro, and he spoke to me gently as I cried and wished I were there with him. I wanted to seek refuge in his great gentlenessness and eventually settled down, hung up and marveled at this moment.
I say with deep regret and sorrow, over the years I attached my ego to this experience in memory and it’s recollection in a self-serving struggle to return to it during many hours of zazen (sitting meditation) at other retreats and in private meditation. It actually became a stumbling block to my practice and movement within the Dharma toward awakening.
What a day it is for the ordinary nap by an ordinary old man living again to heal this good old body for another go at the long trek along the Middle Way until just before death just as my friend and mentor and fellow human being of 2600 years ago, Shakyamuni Gautama, Mr. Gautama, The Buddha, the awakened one, that one among millions of previous Buddha’s who discovered the path of sorrow and happiness and endless possibility and sent his teaching down to this moment on the path, that superhighway, that gap in the wilderness of human experience to perfect and superb wisdom.
What a day it is in Pittsboro, NC to wake up under a comforter in a cool cabin while the gray sky above the dense forest renders me invisible and seeing the rain beat down outside my huge windows. My cat Whiplash asks for just one more check- out- the- front- door- to- see -if- he -wants- to -move- away- from- the-space- heater and its gentle heat there on the floor, occasionally giving a silent “meow” from his beautiful cat face for a handful of kibble – big snacker that kitty.
And sharing this with all of you, what joy I feel and gratitude to be alive with you in this moment that forms my whole reality as these fingers fly across these keys while I watch my words marvelously appear on a screen. I am still enthralled with this technology, having grown up in Williams, Arizona where my second job was working at The Williams News across from my step-father’s shop where each word had to be set on a monstrous linotype from the 19th century, and cast into lead slugs before the sentences could be lay upside down and backward to my view in a huge 100-pound form, locked up, run on a rolling press for checking galleys of type for errors and then on every Thursday rolled out the 12 or 16 page local newspaper filled with the obscure home town stories of people coming and going from this 3000 person hamlet up on Hwy. 66, hoping to trap a California tourist in the good smell of its shops in the warm months in their hasty rush to visit the Grand Canyon just 60 miles away.
Year in and year out, rain, snow, drought and glorious crystal clear skys and a bracing breeze, in what my mother called God’s Country at 5,000 feet in a valley wrapped by the arms of Bill Williams Mountain, 8000 ft. and covered at its summit with snow most of the year, beyond the local thunderstorms that came each summer day about 4:00 pm, and provided all the water we drank fresh and cold, and the Three Sisters foot hills to the north and Flat Rock to the northeast, where as children we gamboled and hiked and picnicked and chased each other during the summer months.
I dream of those days, enlightening my moments in memory.
Brad Page