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

The mirror dissolves*

The mirror dissolves....ZEN*

I am a palace king with all kinds of jewels
It is in my best wishes to give lighty and not be cruel
For I went into a forest and seen my future behind me
It was me that seen me as Now it was Zen to be
As I was puzzled but left with a premonition
It came forward full circle as seen my condition
It was to leave India and traverse the land
To find the Truth of who I am as I took my stand
I sat in front of a cave for nine years in peace
It has come to past my mind never existed as my desires ceased

Dom*Colucci 2009

My own personal Zen

This is the story of my own personal facts about my own Enlightenment and the Zen experience.
The Chinese characters in Zen spell out, SUFFER-LOVE-JOY-FORGET. As in a previous blog you can see that as you go along in life these might come across you in that order or scrambled but according to a Zen experience, this is the order I have found to be most useful.
As long as I can remember, as Bodhidharma portrays, I am my past and future combined as the Now or present. If you look just a little closer that is what you see, as you came from the past and your future is staring you in the face hence the Now. Simple. It is the feeling of emotion especially if it is positive that gets you those things that come to you, but in my Zen they come but as soon as they come the detachment is already in place to let go.
I grew up an unseasoned human being as to not having guidance or paternal structure, but having a mother whose burden was placed on her back to raise my sister and myself as to becoming survivors. My father became very ill and had to leave us discover all about the world alone, but I forgive him as he did not know no other way, at the time I didn't. In our day to day survival, living in public housing and eating tomato juice and macaroni we adapted as if we were living in a forest of the concrete and urban jungle. We seen people enjoying vacation trips and beautiful homes and having fun with their children but that was them and we were us. Some frustration, no alot of frustration grew with resentment and anger as it was well adapted in my family and being pointed directly with our subcon(subconscious) as our new truth and belief. But there is one quality that my mother instilled in us kids...Respect, even if it hurted us. Respect because you honor another being as you would like to be treated yourself.
Little be knownst that at the time we were in the process as watching people ride, what Buddhist call the, "Wheel." In which is to grow attached to something and always be a slave it as it becomes your master of wanting to maintain it over compulsitorily. Case in point, that brand new 1969 Camaro Z/28 as when Saturday comes you would clean it 1000 thousand times a week to say to people, "Look at me, look what I have and it took me all week to clean it." Big Deal, but I will not judge that because that was me as well as time went by.
As I wrote in another blog about Bodhidharma, he seen himself in a vision in the woods as being an older man as his past and future, and was instructed by that man which was himself to leave that area as his lesson was about to begin. He left as instructed by his future(Now) being and found his father was dying. A Buddhist monk who was very Enlightened came in and temporarily made his father well but died anyway.
Bodhidharma, which that is the name given to him by that same Buddhist monk that helped his father temporarily live before he expired, that sounds funny but, wanted to learn Buddhism and went to a monastery with that Enlightened Buddhist monk. In the process, Bodhidharma was told by the master to build a study to meditate in as to be summons on completion. As he was building it almost to perfection, just as he was ready to put the roof on the study, some passer bys were travelling near his roof and he tried to reroute them but they ran over his roof and destroyed it likewise the next try as to building his study in the torrid rain. The last time he tried he built it to perfection as to stand on its own, but he thought to himself,"there is no transparency of this thing." So seeing he was the father of Kung Fu, her took one last look at it and knocked it to the ground in a mear pile of sticks. A messenger came and asked Bodhidharma, "should I get the master?" Bodhidharma said,"Yes." As the master came to see him, he asked Bodhidharma,"Is the study built?" Bodhidharma standing by the pile of rubble said,"Yes, built and NOW FOUND." I love that saying. So this begins with Zen.
Here is how my life fits in with this. After having a fatherless childhood and Now getting married with a great beautiful woman, I decide to affirm having a beautiful home in the process. What happens, the Laws of Attraction are working with me and I get a brand new home in the 'burbs and then after that with 3 paychecks coming in my wife decides to drop a bomb shell on me and wants to stay home. At the time I was devastated and for along time carried a grudge, but something was happening. About January 1985, I gave up on prioritizing things as my agenda and something must have heard me and I let go but only temporarily. That something was my inner voice telling me this is ZEN. As I viewed Zen at the time it was more than just a word, it was my new way of life. My teacher was myself and I read books on it but they are someone elses opinion. I was Now able to go beyond matter as I had a Spirit of me living inside myself and learning how to correctly live my life. It was Awareness as of 3 solid days of the Zero Resistance or Zero Field and a whole new way of utilizing my body in Awareness as it was using everything around me as Now I was a human martial artist master. I picked up sticks and started different katas and was even throwing sharp objects very high up in the air and catching them without any fear or worry, as I still do. What it proves is absoluting nothing but I still can do it as to driving a vehicle or swimming in a pool, it is still the same. It means you are Aware of your own consciousness as also, can stare into the sun, light bulbs and laser lights effortlessly. A disclaimed on this, I would not advice anyone to do any of these things I mentioned as I am a master of doing it and Spiritually cemented in My God. OK ,BIG DEAL. What happens next Mr.?I will tell you.
After letting go and enjoying being a literally a "martial artist", my wife, who hasn't worked as of yet decides another bombshell, but it is a gift and not a bombshell. She wants a child, so I agree as to it is a nice thing to have. OK, this is where the ego comes back and is being neglected in a loveable marriage after I have just been found with Zen.For the next 19 years of ridicule and anger and hatred towards my wife and everyone around, I felt like a big pitiful fool, but did not see it as whatever it was it was laughing at me being a bigger fool. It was ego because it did not get its way. Until I learned with a movie by Rhonda Byrnes, The Secret, it was the Laws of Attraction and I was bringing in my life nothing but negativity. 20 minutes into the movie I turned my life around by thinking and creating positive thoughts. Now my life was getting better as it was positive. I went back and apologized to my wife,daughter and everyone I hurt saying, "I did not mean to be so angry and rotten to them." That took courage and a big weight off of my back and Chakras. Even found out that my fathertless Dad was my biggest teacher as because he was not around, I learned a tough lesson not to go back in. To me that is Enlightenment in itself.
It even gets better as when I live from moment to moment, I begin to detach away from everything in this Universe, including myself. Back around the time of that movie 14February2007 about 2 months later 8April2007, I just watched a movie called the Silent Flute by Sterling Siliphant, written by Bruce Lee, in which ironically seen it back in 1985 as well as Alice in Wonderland (another book about Enlightenment) and this movie solved the Zen riddle of back in 1985 and the rest of my life. In the movie, the sage searching for a book of Enlightenment comes across a blind man and asks him stupid questions as the sage lives in duality. One question stands out and the sage asks,"How long have you been blind?" The blind man says,"How long have you been blind?" the sage replies, "Do you answer a question with a question?" the blind man says,"Do you question and answer?"the sage says,"talking to you is like talking to a brick wall." the blind man says the Buddha, meaning Bodhidharma, sat in front of the wall and when he arose he was Enlightened.
Now, this got my curiousity and when I analyzed it. I went through the motions of it and it solved my Zen riddle as this. Everything moves forward in life, everything....Cannot rewrite history or step on the same ground twice in the same way...these are metaphors. As the Zen riddle, Two hands clapping make a noise, one hand clapping sounds like what?....Does not make a sound but look at the whole picture when you hold your hand out...It goes STRAIGHT AHEAD....Right then in there I almost had a heart attack as my life was finally full of joy. I was acting off the wallish for 2 weeks and almost had to be put in a straight ahead jacket. Literally they, my co-workers, were going to have me commited as I work in a VA Hospital for almost 35 1/2 years and a Disabled Veteran from an incident I manifested a UH-1 US Army helicopter back in 1975. Now I see things in a different light and it is myself that I feel tapping me on the shoulder all the while saying," Hello," to me. Ever since then, I have learned to let go and never touch the "Wheel" again, by meaning I do not participate in anything competitive, don't wish for a better education, watch the news or read a newspaper, don't even read books anymore seeing it is someone elses opinion, even though I respect that but don't seem to need or care about it. When tragedy occurs, there is nothing I can do about it, because it is someone elses Karma and my life is Subjective as everyone elses is. Maybe I can pray the persons suffering or offer some words of healing but basically there is nothing I can do as it is a part of the Wheel.
I do not belong to no group and don't believe in one or read texts about things and make them my gospel or go through any rituals as with Zen it just happens.So it might sound selfish and self centered to live Zen but it is a journey to finding out who you are and has common sense the biggest common denominator. The four components of Zen are, in Chinese characters: SUFFER-LOVE-JOY-FORGET. And as moment by moment go by I am slowly forgetting where I am, what I am and who I am and that is the greatest feeling towards myself. By the way, in Zen there is no talk of God. I acknowledge God as the intelligence that creates all even Awareness but my mission here as to be in ZEN is to let go of God and find I instead. It is a better feeling that way...Spirit within might be connected but True Self to be found makes One even happier. By the way there are no such thing as Zen Masters. Zen is an experience as the student could be the experience and the sage the teacher and vice versa. The only master so far in a physical body is Death, by you living life every moment you have strategized living life at that moment and not mastered it.
I have just about forgotten and I will be complete for there is nothing outside myself and even inside.
There are no books to read or teachers to follow with Zen. It is your own experience as you figure out what is holding you back to your next step of Awareness.
And by the way, depending on who you are with your ego, it is not as easy as it sounds to get past your ego, but you will know that when you stumble across it.As you believe your trials are severe on that path you will see things that will make it more severe if you agree with it..Stay steadfast as the brighter side awaits you as it did for me...I lived 3 days of total silence as it badgered me almost to death and found out it was an illusion. As I said this is my own personel Zen...
I hope you have enjoyed my piece as much as I have given it to you. The Universe is not biased on who you are as it will dish out what you want it to offer. As I said, this is my own truth and experience as every individual that enters the Universe has to find justice for their own trials and there judge begins with their own ego. As said in the movie The Silent Flute....Changsha, the alter ego will not let Cord, the sage get to the next level and must fight him to do so,"All you got to do is pass by me(ego). As Bodhidharma told his disciples including Huike, "many will study Zen but few will live it." Good Luck with your Zen. It was interesting for me to get where I got....and still is as I hear one hand clapping.
Peace with Zen Dom* Colucci 777

Bodhidharma, father of Zen

Bodhidharma, father of Zen

Man of future, man of past
Does man exist at all or will he last
Come from India on a long trek
He left India with no shoes on his feet, oh what the heck
Traverse so far to see clearly through
It is the only thing in life that is enlightened to do
He meets up with monks in China to seek a wall in the cave
Nine years in front of the wall my Spirit is saved
Get up in the Now and Now know how to do it again.
Yes he is himself,Bodhidharma the father of Zen
Dominic Colucci
Copyright ©2009 Dominic Colucci