Bodhidharma and the Now*

Bodhidharma and the Now*

These days you hear a lot about Spirituality and the Now. You are about your past and your future is the Now. Do you know what that means? Do you know where it is? Well of course it is in the Now. But it took me some deep meditations and analyzing certain conditions and even watching a few you tube videos with the movie. The Silent Flute by Sterling Siliphant and feeling out peoples emotions to uncover this gem that has been sitting with us since the dawn of time and it came from the teachings of Bodhidharma, the Father of ZEN and KUNG FU. Here was a man who was in a royal family in India and wanted to know the way to Enlightenment. Early on he met up with a figure that was he future and his past and even told him he would be meeting him the future.

Bodhidharma was unique when he became a Buddhist monk. His master told him to build a study for his meditations and he, the master, would be back to see the study the meditation study when it was completed. A few attempts arose, just as he was near completion of the study for his meditations some circumstances came along to disrupt his perfection of his ego and then realized after he built the study to perfection, he would not need the study and by glance he destroyed the whole study in a few swipes and kicks laid to ruins. A messenger came to see if Bodhidharma was ready for the master to see if Bodhidharma was ready for the master and Bodhidharma’s reply was, “Go get the master.”

When the master came to see the study, he noticed it was destroyed and asked Bodhidharma, Is it completed? And Bodhidharma’s reply was, I love this one, “Yes it has been built and founded. The start of Zen was here. Bodhidharma was given his name and was told to save all living beings with his wisdom of Enlightenment, so he made a trek to China. The Buddhist monks in China awaited his arrival and when he did show up, they looked at a very dark complexion man with a dark beard and no shoes. His first day of teaching when he arrived he gathered up all the monks and they sat before him awaiting his teachings. Bodhidharma, sat in a lotus position in front of the Buddhist monks and started meditating. The monks looked perplexed and after some time of meditating, Bodhidharma got up and walked away. Now the monks were confused but a few said ,”I think we just learned a lesson.” In the meantime they gave Bodhidharma a pair of sandals for his feet. As the days went on Bodhidharma found a niche in a cave and this is where it all started with the NOW and this is how I learned about the ZEN riddle with two hands clapping make a noise, what does one hand clapping sound like?

Now Bodhidharma takes refuge with the meditations in the cave as well and sits there in silence for nine years. Here he gets a devoted follower named Huike, who patiently awaits for Bodhidharma’s awakening. When Bodhidharma awakens, he gets up and sees Huike outside the cave. Huike wants to learn his teachings but Bodhidharma refuses to teach him. In a rage of commitment Huike takes a knife and cuts off his arm in pure dedication to his humble master, Bodhidharma. Now Bodhidharma cannot just leave Huike there without repayment of something and because of his sincerity to Bodhidharma, he leaves him some writings, clothes, and his begging bowl.
Supposedly after the 9 year stint, a man sees Bodhidharma walking in the field going back to India and says hello to him. The same man goes into town and sees another a man and says, “I just seen Bodhidharma. He had his staff and his sandal tied to it.” The other gentleman says, “Where?” “Going back to India.” The other man says, “that is impossible because Bodhidharma has been dead for 3 months.” The both men go back to his grave and find it empty and the other sandal left there. I would guess the analogy would be that he left someone else to fill that sandal. But he did tell his students before he left that many will follow ZEN only a few will live it.

Now the analogy I get from this is an epiphany a few days back and it goes like this: We come into this world from a previous life as the Tibetan Book of the Dead suggests. The moment of our arrival we inherit a Spirit that manifests our physical body. Along the road we develop and ego and it blocks the Spirit. Due to the fact that NOW ego is in control we start in the process of judging, preening, and primping to mask who we are and start dividing and conquering. We only get so far because we are overcome by guilt, fear, worry and ignorance. We start to feel like we can do it all to appease the ego’s image. But along that road or spoke we run into road blocks as warnings. Do we take heed of them? NO. Because our ego says we can work harder to reach that goal or award of satisfaction. This starts the process of our negative outlook on life, sort of like Bodhidharma got frustrated when building his study. So after hitting the mental brick wall for 50 or more years we feel we lost something, Bodhidharma was lucky because he only hit the mental brick wall for 9. We start to get tired, run down, stressed out and get sick and eventually die before our time. But when do you encounter a brick wall mental or otherwise, STOP!!! Look at the situation and NOW turn it around. Because you just did that, in which this is what Bodhidharma did, you are on the path towards Enlightenment and Now you are walking on the same spokes of the “wheel” that got you to your future(sickness and death start all over again in the next life, why? Because you were ignorant and did not learn a lesson. You retired the lesson). The analogy about the future or end is take a closer look at the “wheel”. It has a hub, spokes and outer rim. If you just did what I explained you hit the outer rim and you are trying to go beyond that barrier and your future stopped because you went outside yourself to divide and conquer. NOW the flip side of that is that if you did a 180 degree turn you are on the path of Enlightenment and on your way home to your center where your Spirit is, the same Spirit that manifested you into the physical, is waiting for you. So Now if you see it is your future is NOW your past because you know your past better than your future. Nicodemus heard Jesus speak of being “BORN AGAIN” but Nicodemus questioned Jesus bout being “BORN AGAIN” and going into the mother’s womb again. Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You cannot got back to the mother’s womb, but you can meet Spirit and be ‘BORN AGAIN’ in Spirit” and this is where the 180 degree takes a turn for the greater, to finally arrive home. In which you look at it, just like Bodhidharma’s being said to him, I am your past and your future and because you are right NOW, you are both of them. It is just NOW with your direction changed your future is your past and your past is your future as they both cancel each other out to produce the NOW. Does this make sense to you? It did for me.

Another thing about Spirit before I go, you have heard the term, “THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.”. Just by hitting the brick wall and leaving it there, you left your ego smashed up there and your Spirit you around to come home, so your Spirit is the TRUTH and the only TRUTH because Spirit was always here, ego showed up later and that is the TRUTH and the Spirit is freedom or liberation from you bondage of a masked life or one sided mind. This whole column was about a person on the path to Enlightenment and finding out the simple things in life were easier than finding chemical research or digging up bones in the ground. After all in my opinion that is outside yourself and created this chaos in the first place.

I hope I came across with a point and as always it is my opinion and my experience in my life but was so overwhelmed by this feeling I had to share it with anyone willing to read this. I do not belong to any religious organizations or cults or memberships because I feel they are conformists and should strictly follow the leader and stay on the straight and narrow. Why? I do not know and do not give 2 shits about it. My life is my own and no one else’s to be or figure out or judge. I came from a Roman Catholic family and could never get off on a book, that taught year after year the same old same old and never applied themselves. I converted to Methodist in 1971 but found out you had to submit to their group. My great grandmother on my mother’s side of the family was Jewish and escaped NAZI Austria around 1933. Studied Buddhism but to me it is another man’s opinion but have a deep passion on the teachings of ZEN and receive Divine Wisdom from God/Source/Higher Intel through the Kabbalah and pinpoint what happened at Creation with the fall of man. I consider myself a Spiritualist and I alone. NOW I say to each his own and please enjoy my readings and if you did not, well you read anyways, then all I can say is move on and enjoy your life the way you wish….

Dom*Colucci 2009