The Meaning of My Orange Rain Jacket

When my maroon rain jacket stopped shedding rain and started absorbing it instead, it was clear I needed a new one. Here in Seattle, I wear a jacket almost every day - for the wind if not the water. I decided I wanted a very visible color for safety. In the winter the sun goes down as early as 4:30 in the afternoon, so I often end up walking our dog in the dark. I want to be visible for her sake too.
Bicyclists and some runners are very good about lights and reflective vests; pedestrians not so much, particularly not the students at Ballard High, which I pass by every time I drive from my house to the Temple. They favor all black clothes, of course; much hipper than the geeky orange. They cross in the middle of the block, often without looking up from their smartphone. (There's a reason those devices aren't called wisdom-phones.) I want to yell wrathfully at them but instead make prayers that Dorje Shugden will protect them.

There was a jacket that was said to be the best at water-repellency, was reasonably priced, and came in bright orange. Then I realized that what I was thinking about was my precious human life. Also the wisdom of Manjushri and Je Tsongkhapa.

I've built a pretty solid habit where I say Dorje Shugden's mantra when I'm driving, that he will protect others, as one of my worst fears is hitting a pedestrian or another car. Help me out here, people. Thankfully I've seen on community boards around town that the city has a "Drive With Care and Walk Aware" campaign.

And I saw those posters yesterday when I was putting out publicity for the Center. Exiting a Starbucks as an older guy entered, he commented that he liked the orange and said - get this -  that it was a Buddhist color! We stepped inside and had a short conversation about Buddhism, with him talking about his Guru. True story.

Carpe Diem

This common phrase (usually translated as "seize the day") might seem a bit out of place on a Buddhist blog, as it's commonly associated with hedonism, but I heard an echo in the Stages of the Path prayer:

This human life with all its freedoms,
Extremely rare, with so much meaning;
O Bless me with this understanding
All day and night to seize its essence.

Seize the day, seize the moment, seize your life - make it meaningful, by putting Dharma into practice as you go through your usual routine.

Annie Dillard, my favorite non-Buddhist writer, in her piece "Living Like Weasels" in the collection called Teaching a Stone to Talk, describes an eagle with the skull of a dead weasel still attached to its neck; the mammal probably attacked the bird and never let go. She uses this as an analogy to "stalk your calling":

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you're going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even ...

This idea has been giving energy to my meditation on our Precious Human Life. Of course, all life is precious. Buddhists try to practice non-harmfulness by not killing animals, even small ones, like mosquitoes, and ones we tend to abhor, like rats (I'll confess I'm still working on loving them). We try to learn how to help and protect them - for example, by fishing drowning fruit flies out of drinks (you'd be surprised how often they survive!) or by reciting mantras to them.

But "precious" in the context of this meditation means the spiritual potential that is only available when you're a human being. We think that once-in-a-lifetime opportunities shouldn't be missed - but what about this once-in-a-lifetimes opportunity? It's so big, we can't see it. Buddha is always encouraging us to have a bigger mind: thinking beyond this life, beyond ourselves, etc. Usually we think of thoughts inside our mind like objects within a room, and sometimes it seems like these Buddhist objects are bigger than the little space of our room. We need a bigger room. We need to push back the walls of our mind in order to expand.

Tell me ...

"Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?"
- Mary Oliver, from her poem "The Summer Day"

This quotation arrived in my email, in a newsletter I subscribe to - it seemed serendipitous. Oliver's not a Buddhist, although she often sounds like one. (You can read some more samplings of her poems at http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/23988.Mary_Oliver.)

In a rare interview, in O magazine, March 9, 2011, the poet says, "When I was very young and decided I wanted to try to write as well as I could, I made a great list of all the things I would never have." It sounds like something an aspiring nun or monk - or a layperson serious about training in non-attachment - would do and reminded me of Gen-la's advice at the end of the Western Canada Dharma Celebration on how to finance a trip to Summer Festival: Every time you deny yourself something, you put what it would have cost into a box on your shrine. She said we'll be able not just to afford our own trip, but also to sponsor some of our Sangha friends: )