It was on the shores of Long Island sound in Connecticut. He pulled a horseshoe crab out of the water and showed it to me; I was astonished that water could hold such strange and miraculous creatures, it seemed almost impossible to me. I couldn't understand how the ordinary-looking water might produce such an amazing thing. He explained to me that they were common, and that they came in close to the shore in the summer time to lay their eggs.
Later that day, I wanted to show my parents what a big boy I was, and I carried my father's shoes back to the car. They were proud of me; none of us suspected that in doing so, I had forgotten my own shoes on the beach. My parents were very, very poor at that time, and losing my shoes represented a huge blow. There was a big uproar about it at home that night; I remember that too.
All of this came back to me this morning while I was meditating in my hotel room in Shanghai. I realized that my impulse to serve–perhaps all of our collective impulses to serve— something higher in our lives is a bit like this. We aspire to something greater than ourselves; we want to show this greater thing, whatever it is, that we are worthy, and that we are able to care for it. Somehow, in the process, we don't see that this greater force—we could call it God, or we could call it the Dharma—has given us our own shoes to wear, which we need to attend to. We forget our own shoes in our rush to carry the shoes of our Father.
It never occurs to us that our Father gave us our own shoes because we need them, and that He needs us to be responsible for those shoes; that, in fact, it may cost Him a great deal if we don't carry our own shoes, and attend to our own life. We are off trying to take care of Him—a task that is really much too great for us—and not taking care of ourselves, which is what we ought to have done in the first place.
Of course none of this is obvious to us. That's because we are children; children have a limited understanding, and, although they have a grand idea of themselves, a rightful pride—after all, every life has a right to some self-respect—they lose sight of the task. In their eagerness to please the parent, they miss the mark.
It's very important for us to see that we need to serve our Fathers—and our Mothers. We can take that allegorically or literally, it is true in both cases. There are times, however, when this service consists of attending to ourselves, and understanding that setting our sights above us may be misleading. Being distracted by the nobility of our cause can lead to a downfall. We must begin with the basics.
It's a question of balance, to honor both this impulse to serve a higher force and the need to do a much more mundane and perhaps even uninteresting kind of service in our immediate lives. The fact that we can't balance these two impulses well probably has a great deal to do with the way men and women can go to church on Sunday and kneel down in apparently honest humility, and then later go off to break every vow they took while they were kneeling.
Higher forces show us miracles. They are real miracles, not things in religious textbooks; extraordinary creatures that emerge from the water whole, unexpected, revealing aspects of life that seem impossible to understand. And they are; our Fathers and our Mothers, both on earth and in heaven, have this ability to reveal higher truth to us, whether we understand that as the children of men and women or the children of God. In respecting this, and remembering that we are children, perhaps able to do tasks bigger than ourselves, and yet not suited to them, we may gain a perspective of some kind.
There's no doubt that I want to carry my Father's shoes to the car, to honor Him. Yet this morning I see that it's important for me to remember that my Father has given me my own shoes, and by honoring those shoes, already, I honor my Father, before I even get to where His shoes are.
No comments:
Post a Comment