Sunday night of the New York Blizzard, M and I turned on the TV set and “The Buddha,” a PBS special was on. The following Monday, she is off to India, to lands that Prince Siddhartha roamed, on a personal quest of her own.
I am moved by “The Buddha,” but curious. I feel the excluding of family in the Buddha’s teachings because, it is written, that at twenty-nine he abandoned them to meditate on the suffering of mankind when, even though he is an affluent prince of the warrior caste, he is bringing on – certainly – sufferings to his own young family by abruptly leaving them to go on his vague quest for the path to “happiness” for all men (and women.)
Windows rattle with the wind. I’m home from work just as the worst of the blizzard hits. Slumbering Thurber, who can sleep through a sidewalk jackhammer, is stirring on the couch.
Does the Buddha deserve redemption for having succeeded, having achieved enlightenment so that childlike if not childless poets on the PBS special extol his greatness, tell us that in the sacred places one can literally step into the impressions of a footprint made by our hero, and exclaim, “My goodness, he has ten toes, Buddha is an ordinary man, like me”?
Such a declaration seems not very Buddha. How would he feel about the sense of glory that comes with such a view? In Christianity, the ecclesiastical hierarchy invites gold and fine raiment and the eternal glorification of central figures, God and Jesus Christ, less so Judiasm, but still there is a hallowedness, that the name of God is not to be uttered (For fear? For awe?). Wherein lies the ordinary man? How can we feel we can cover our footprint with that of the holiest of men in Buddhism and be in sync with a humble teacher, not a religious icon?
In my life, I have seen many blizzards. And this, despite early forecasts of only a heavy snow, is turning into a doozy. Not like the tornado that ripped through our backyard in mid-September. But bad.
There is no greater blessing than to teach, what Siddhartha learned under the Bodhi tree at the Mahabodhi Temple, beating back on many occasions the threats of the desire demons, the Minotaur-like creature Mara who is finally banished when Buddha reveals what he has learned, that the most sacred space is the earth, which has given and given and given, and now as forever we humans must find a way to protect it, to do the work to make the earth stronger, if we can. That each moment on earth carries with it the promise of nirvana, of enlightenment. Nirvana cannot come from any other source. It must come from within.
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The best teachers are the best writers. They are not born; rather, it’s a practice.
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Etched by a child’s hand upon the snowy window of a blizzard-buried car in Brownstone Brooklyn: A happy face and the words, “Good luck with this.”
Overheard while walking Thurber (Dec. 29) in Prospect Park, a father-to-son anecdote: “A bus was left in the road, with the door open. Inside it was empty, except for the driver. And do you know who was behind the wheel?” Boy: (No answer) Dad: “Frosty the snowman! Someone had built a snowman in the driver’s seat.”
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Hard to channel the anger. What does one say after a two-foot blizzard, when homeowners clean and salt and make clear the passageways in front of where they live, but those responsible for the apartment buildings and condos and schools and organizations of all types, buildings managed by those supported by taxpayer dollars and those that provide a luxury livelihood for some, a nice bit of return for others, pretty much uniformly don’t lift a finger, move a garden trowel of snow, most of the last of it having stopped falling by 9 a.m. Monday, and now it is 1 p.m. Tuesday (Dec. 28), twenty-eight hours and the steady urban foot and sleigh and dog-paw traffic has condensed that ton of impassable snow into a mass that will require a week of warm weather and heavy machinery to remove and return to us our walkways, those that are so treacherous underfoot I imagine people who cannot do as I do, leap small snowbanks, lead Thurber ahead of me, my neighbor and friend Abraham, lifelong in a wheelchair, always in a buoyant mood, for one, and those who must walk with canes, the elderly and frail, afraid above all else of falling and maiming themselves, and my good pal M falls on the ice in the dark and lands hard on his back, the last thing he can afford to have in his life is an injury and the sheer negligence of the owners of the place where he lives with his wife and his two near-incapacitated parents makes that more than possible.
Would that the Buddha have been tested in blizzard aftermath while its public leader, Bloomberg, a billionaire mayor in Bermuda, is missing.
It is hard not to be angry with those who do not keep a lane clear for all to walk and get around and see what there is to see in the park (Dec. 29), if they only could get here, where the road has been given a plowing or two, it is tough-going in a few spots, but Thurber and I we can manage to run a little, slipping here and there, watchful for black ice, and babies on sleighs and young pups like him off the leash and he’d like to play too, but the bloodhound in him always says run, so off we go and after the blizzard each stride is different, in spots the sky so blue because today it is mild, barely freezing, and that blue sky through the trees, above the fields of snow, is right there, right in your face, as you whisper, “Good boy, Thurb. Good running.”
Next: Running for Your Life: Mental Landscapes
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