Relationships are what we do with them

Dhr. Seven, Amber Dorrian, Dev, Wisdom Quarterly; Nisha Gulati

Blue space avatar with Radha Devi, the faithful consort (vishnu108.deviantart.com)

  

Once upon a time, a girl was born into the world and lived among milk maidens. She grew up to be of surpassing beauty with a retinue. Her countenance shone like a space-faring (celestial) devi. Then she met a boy.
  
Males have kept the story, the history, which is his-story not her-story. So they put the man in the ascendant and think it fair to say that she controls him with devotional and romantic love.
 

(Smart Girls) Hip hop dancer Viri talks to Amy about self-confidence.

She dances, sings, entertains, but is it enough complement a relationship? The girl -- whether Radha, Viri, or even Amy -- makes the pair (shaktiman) in modern, male-dominated conceptions of religion.

  

The truth is we might complete each other, but we certainly complete ourselves by bringing in both poles, both sides of our potential. The "divine personality," the complete Radha, is Radha Krishna, a central tenet of devotional Hinduism.

  

What is the message? Rise up to be first and last, alpha and omega, yin AND yang. Then there is no needing anyone, and one is ready to complement another.

Relationships are what we make of them -- a codependent mess, a crippling crutch, a pleasant pastime, an over reliance on someone until there's none of us left. Is there a middle way?

Birth of Radha

Radha Krishna (iloveindia.com)

The story of her birth goes like this. On a half-moon night in the Indian month of Bhadra, King Vrishabhanu came to the Yamuna river to bathe and found himself engulfed in a golden aura. It was emanating from a lotus, which had a baby girl standing on its whorl. When the king returned to the palace with the baby, Queen Kirtida was delighted. She was also shocked that the girl was blind. Krishna’s mother, Yashoda, heard that Queen Kirtida, her best friend, had a baby. So she came to visit along with her husband and her son. The baby Krishna crawled up to the cradle, pulled himself up, and looked in. At that moment, Radha’s eyes fluttered open and blossomed like lotuses. It seems that she did not want to see anything of this world other than the form of Krishna. More

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Zen: Banishing a Ghost

Roshi Jeff Albrizze (PasaDharma.org), Ron Crosthwaite, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

"Brown Lady" ghost (answers.com)

    
Banishing a Ghost
The wife of a man became very sick. On her deathbed, she said to him, "I love you so much! I don't want to leave you, and I don't want you to betray me. Promise that you will not see any other women once I die, or I will return to haunt you!"

For several months after her death, the husband avoided other women. But then he met someone and fell in love. On the night that they were engaged to be married, the ghost of his former wife appeared.
   
She blamed him for not keeping the promise, and every night thereafter she returned to taunt him. The ghost would remind him of everything that transpired between him and his fiancee that day, even to the point of repeating, word for word, their conversations. It upset him so badly that he could no longer sleep.
  
Desperate, he sought the advice of a Zen master who lived near the village. "This is a very clever ghost," the master said upon hearing the man's story. "It is!" replied the man. "She remembers every detail of what I say and do. It knows everything!" 

   

The master smiled, "You should admire such a ghost, but I will tell you what to do the next time you see it."

That night the ghost returned. The man responded just as the master had advised: "You are such a wise ghost," the man said. "You know that I can hide nothing from you. If you can answer me one question, I will break off the engagement and remain single for the rest of my life."

  

"Ask your question," the ghost replied. The man scooped up a handful of beans from a large bag on the floor, "Tell me exactly how many beans there are in my hand."

At that moment the ghost disappeared and never returned.

 

Commentary

Ghosts are real (lifeslittlemysteries.com).

   

This story speaks to the way we often let past experiences and subconscious thought patterns crowd out our experience of our present day life.

• How do we let thoughts and memories about the past “haunt” us?
• When has a self-limiting belief, based on a past relationship, interfered with a current relationship?
• Do we have harmful emotional survival patterns subconsciously adopted and, if so, how can mindfulness practice help us see and release them?
• How can our Zen practice of being in the moment be related to “counting beans”? 
• Can this mindfulness help us put painful memories in perspective and loosen our “death grip” of clinging and attachment to how we think things must be?

See the discussion live or participate. PasaDharma has chosen this old Zen story as the group reading for tonight (Thursday, 7:00 pm, Aug. 30, 2012). Roshi Albrizze explains.
    
When I first read "Banishing a Ghost" about 15 years ago, it didn't make much sense to me. After revisiting it this week, it really opened up for me. The way it spoke to me is that the symbolism of the "ghost wife" is really the way my mind wants to hold on to old stories and conditions as a permanent abiding sense of self. The "handful of beans" symbolizes the present moment and the liberation from the suffering of grasping at thoughts and memories that comes when we commit to being present in the moment, experiencing our everyday activity as the Buddha Way.

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"It will pass" (meditation)

James Khan (detoxifynow.com); Meditation Committee, Wisdom Quarterly

A student went to a meditation teacher and complained:

  
"My meditation is horrible! I feel so distracted! My legs ache! I'm constantly falling asleep! It's just horrible!"

 

"It will pass," the teacher replied matter of factly.
 

A week later, the student came back to the teacher to report:
  
"My meditation is wonderful! I feel so aware! I feel so peaceful! I feel so alive! It's just wonderful!'
 

"It will pass," the teacher replied matter of factly.

Commentary

"Oh, of course! Why did I let myself get clingy?"

Goenka once lamented (as anyone who sits the free 10-day course will hear him tell) that many students grasp at their meditative successes and want to know how to re-experience them, how to bring them back, how to have just good sits without the "wasted" time sessions. The lament is that it is just this sort of grasping we sit to let go of. While letting go, much more comes. But we cannot easily let go to get more to come. That is a subtle form of grasping and clinging. Long after the Buddha but long before Goenka, the Western poet Alexander Pope immortalized this message, perhaps never realizing how much it describes attempts at meditating, in this stanza:

"Oh thoughtless mortals! ever blind to fate,
Too soon dejected, and too soon elate!"

("The Rape of the Lock")

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