Yours in the Dharma:  Essays from a Buddhist perspective by Sandy Garson

This blog, Yours in the Dharma by Sandy Garson, is an effort to navigate life between the fast track and the breakdown lane, on the Buddhist path. It tries to use a heritage of precious, ancient teachings to steer clear of today's pain and confusion to clear the path to what's truly happening.

Friday, October 14, 2005

AND NOW SOME GOOD NEWS

SAN FRANCISCO: Last weekend, once those Blue Angels stopped bombarding the sky, our small group quietly poured thousands of living creatures into the bay below: crabs, fish, and shrimp said to total 450 lives in every pound. We had on short notice raised over $1250 to ransom these beings from the doom of baitdom and their provider was so moved he gave us more to free than we paid for.

Hearing we Buddhists were collecting for this fish release, one of my friends complained we should’ve thought first about feeding the hungry instead of wasting all that money. She brought to mind the story heard about American missionaries scolding a venerable Tibetan meditation master for sitting still not doing anything useful while they, armed with Bibles, powdered milk and Spam, were out saving the world.

We were out saving life because all weekend we were performing ceremonies dedicated to a long life for our esteemed but elderly Tibetan guru. To be so brazen as to beseech the higher energies to invade and extend his life, we were demonstrating that we too were prepared to extend life—that we were worthy of our request. Ours was a cause that wanted a certain effect: tit for tat or what goes round comes back at you.

As we downloaded pails and coolers into the water, we clustered at the end of the dock, tossing rose petals and chanting prayers for “peace and delightful years, the crops bountiful and cattle increased…all wishes fulfilled.” The speed boats zipping back from the thunderous military show came to an amazed halt. The gull formation that bombarded with its own precision screeching didn’t try to nip below the surface and grab a bite; the birds quietly floated in a semi circle, watching.

As he poured the last bucket of brine shrimp into the sea one of the participants actually wondered what good any of this could really do. That night he got a call announcing his beloved aunt, to whom he had dedicated the pouring of the final pail, for reasons no one in the hospital could explain had come out of her coma and vastly increased her chances to live.

Also that night another participant’s father was saved from certain death because he collapsed from his second heart attack at precisely the moment after he picked up the ringing phone. The person on the other end was consequently able to summon help that otherwise could not have come given that her father lives alone.

These coincidences are of course open to interpretation. But it is a fact that everyone who participated in or contributed to this fish release has been euphoric even through the seemingly endless release of troubling and depressing news. It is also true that the recounting of our outpouring into the bay palpably brightened hearts burdened by the weekend’s headlines of bodies crushed by earthquakes and buried by mudslides and blown up by suicide bombers. Filling spirits with a little joy, we in essence fed the hungry.

According to the bait man, other Buddhists regularly come to release fish. It is a way to gain merit, to pay back for lives destroyed for dinner, to save the world one being at a time as it’s released from suffering. Although many economically obsessed people and their representatives fervently think so, human life is not the only life on Earth. Buddhist thinking out of the crocks reminds that all forms are interconnected and dependent.

These beliefs acted out on that dock are not uniquely Buddhist. This very moment of the year Muslims and Jews refrain from eating to purify themselves and be worthy of requests. In fact that portion of their beloved Bible scheduled to be read aloud says: “See I have set before you death and life. Therefore choose life that you may live, you and your children and your children’s children.”

See, it isn’t difficult.


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