The Headless Man and Other Mistakes

Today driving back to my house from the Temple, I saw a headless man walking along the street!
He was like a visitor from a hell realm, missing his most crucial "limb."
Or that was how he looked from the back.
I was relieved when I saw him from the front that it was just that his hooded head was bowed down so far forward that his head disappeared. Most people who are bent over are C-shaped, with a curved back, but he was more F-shaped, with a straight back and a head almost parallel to the ground. He seemed to be walking just fine, not shuffling along the way many people with structural problems do.

At Summer Festival, Gen-la Dekyong encouraged us to collect these false sightings, these gross mistaken appearances, even to keep a notebook of them, because they help undermine our confidence that "seeing is believing," and thus help us overcome our subtle mistaken appearance, our belief in those solid things "out there," that have no relationship with our mind. My first reaction was that I rarely had gross mistaken appearance - but I was mistaken about that too. (A notebook? I'd only need a scrap of paper, I thought.)

Yesterday morning I had another false sighting: I was taking the dog for a short walk down the block. I looked up to see a beautiful quarter moon in a mostly blue sky. For a few moments, the moon seemed to be racing along, but it was the clouds blown by the wind in front of the moon that were actually moving. It was like when you're on a train in the station, sitting at the window and looking out, and it feels like you've started to leave the platform. But it's actually the train next to you that's in motion - you haven't moved at all.

Gen-la gave a personal example: She saw a brown shape scurrying across the path and started making prayers for this little mouse. When she realized it was only a dead leaf blown by the wind, she told herself, "You're so daft, saying prayers for a leaf!"

After hearing the teaching, I saw a bowl with a banana peel as a pile of sliced lemons and a thin stick, I think, as a slug, a cousin to one I'd seen earlier in the shower, but its shape was so stick-like that to this day I'm still not sure if it was a stick or a slug - I didn't want to investigate further.

It's good to be wrong sometimes. It's humbling. And that is a good state for learning.