Circumambulating the Self

The daily writing and posting project is wearing thin. Lying in bed this morning I wondered how many more mornings I will continue to write. Perhaps I have said what I needed to say? Perhaps I have offered up as much wisdom and perspective as I have? Perhaps it is time to go back and read it all over and see if there is a book in it all somewhere?

Of course things just get really interesting when we move beyond the end of what we had planned. So maybe I should just go on writing with an openness to whatever may arise? Or I could go back and pick random posts from other mornings to read and comment on. I could make a practice of debunking everything I have written—or at least give the other side—or I could elaborate on whatever I had said.

My intention has been to offer what I have to support and encourage others to pay attention to their own experience. This seems most essential to me, that we all find a way to follow the wisdom and difficulty that arises as we live. The truth is not ‘out there’, but rather in each of us. The most meaningful compliments I have ever received from readers is that they feel less alone and more at home in their own skin after reading something I have written—that what I have written reminds them of what they already know.

I suppose it’s my own loneliness that gives me the energy to write and share, to teach and practice Zen. One of the people I asked to write a blurb for my book said he thought I was slightly depressed and wrote about the same things again and again. He was right, I do sometimes struggle with feeling separate and I do go back to the same things over and over.

When I was in Kathmandu, Nepal seven years ago, I stayed in the guesthouse of a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery right next to Boudhanath Stupa—a holy pilgrimage site for many Buddhists. The faithful (and I suppose the not-so-faithful as well) come and express their reverence and their prayers by walking around and around this imposing structure. Without the crowds, it takes about ten minutes to make the loop—that is if you don’t stop to buy anything from the vendors selling religious trinkets, incense and tourist paraphernalia.

The more deeply faithful or expressive go around the stupa by bowing. Standing up straight, they bring their hands together in prayer, then extend themselves on the ground—fully flat with arms extended—then rise up. In this way, they move forward body length by body length. The more experienced of the bowers have pads on their knees and wooden boards on their hands so they can slide easily over the rough cobblestones as they prostrate themselves. These devout worshipers are appreciated by the walkers and are often given small donations of cash to support their endeavor.

But I meant to talk about the circumambulation of the stupa and how we are all going round and round the stupa of our self—trying to figure out who we are. We revisit the same issues again and again. We are all working out our salvation with fear and trembling as my Christian friends would say. We can only work with who we are, but we are told, again and again, that everything we need is already here.

What we need is here, but it’s not obvious. In fact, it is so hidden that it is often hard to believe that what we already have enough. Most of us are so sure that we are missing something. Indeed we are, but what we are missing is waiting patiently right where we are.

So we look again and again. We get up every morning and try to find our way into the truth of the moment. We move through another day and another day. Coming up against the familiar fears and worries, we move into new versions of our fears and worries. And sometimes, when the stars align and the grace of the universe descends on us, we wake up to the simple freedom of just what is here. Who we have always been turns out to be more than enough and we settle into where we have always been as our true home.