Part 12: The Great Path of Awakening

Grandfather: We find with The Great Path of Awakening an escape from the dilemma of the ubermensch. What, basically, is the book about? 

Hector: It's a handbook of meditation techniques. It's designed to bring the practitioner to a state of awareness that underlies Mahayana Buddhism, the Bodhisattva vow. Askita divides the instruction into seven points, the seven points of mind training. By training in this method you'll be willing to set aside stepping off the wheel of birth and death until every sentient being becomes enlightened. 

Grandfather: Yes and the basis of the practice is something we've seen in a lot of traditions; understanding the imaginary nature of the external world, keeping our attention in the moment, mindfulness, and not being attached to the results of actions. What is unique is the transference techniques that are taught, the transference of love. Starting with your mother, or in our dysfunctional society, someone, who has loved and sacrificed for you, a feeling of love is cultivated and then extended to others. 

Hector: I remember. The next step is to breath in the suffering your mother, and others as your mother, experienced. But as you bring this in you foster an intense sense of joy simultaneously. 

Grandfather: You then breathe, and send out all your virtuous activity and happiness, past and present to all other sentient beings, each of which is another form of your mother. At the same time you are cultivating a feeling of joy. 

Hector: But before you do this exchange with others you need to do it with yourself. 

Grandfather: Exactly, you need to take upon yourself all the suffering that will come upon you in the future. When the fear of that is dissolved, you are capable of doing it with others. The principle mirrors one of the basic premises of human psychology, you cannot truly love others until you have the proper love for yourself. That love is not selfishness but the love associated with experiencing the true self, the infinite light. 

Hector: This is all real interesting but what does it have to do with your teacher. He never taught the Bodhisattva vow. As a matter of fact I remember you telling me at one point that Dr Lenz said that this method was mistaken. It was impossible for all sentient beings to become enlightened. 

Grandfather: Yes, and he also said that the method was useful in helping an individual to gather the energy together to go to higher levels of awareness. You're right, Dr. Lenz, didn't explicitly teach the path of devotion, but lets get real. He didn't expect us to so totally forget the place of love and devotion that we would evolve into a little collection of ubermensches. He would speak of his feelings towards us from time to time, the affection that he had for each of his students. But within the warrior tradition these are left unsaid, unsaid but all the more real because they are unspoken. And Dr. Lenz personally was doing an exchange with each of his students that was like the exchange just described. However this was done on a subtle physical level as he cycled our energies through his aura. 

Hector: Sort of like a inter-dimensional dialysis machine. 

Grandfather: Sort of. I think that the problem we had back in 96 was that although the Great Compassion was not explicitly taught, Dr. Lenz didn't expect that we would repudiate it. It's like going to a sensei that teaches only advanced techniques. He doesn't have you do pushups or sit-ups and he doesn't talk to you about nutrition. That doesn't mean that he expects his students to pig out on junk food and not maintain a high level of physical fitness. Dr. Lenz didn't expect that we would abandon basic love and compassion for the illusory superiority of the ubermensch. 

Hector: So what did you do about this, other than recognizing there was a problem. 

Grandfather: Well as soon as I read Crime and Punishment I got the message. One of the things I immediately began to do was to relate differently to beggars. 

Hector: To beggars? 

Grandfather: Yes, you would see them on the subway or the street from time to time. I usually avoided acknowledging their existence, frequently by plunging my attention deeper into the book I was reading. I stopped doing that. I gave each person money but more importantly I looked into their eyes and acknowledged them. I also said inwardly, 'You and I are the same'. 

Hector: But you weren't the same. They had awful karma if they were in that state, not to mention a totally messed up tonal. For whatever else was happening, you at least had enough personal power to generate the money necessary to maintain yourself as one of Dr. Lenz's students. 

Grandfather: I know that and that was all real as well. But I had no difficulty seeing that aspect of reality; my problem was not seeing the other side that was even more real. And my inability to see the other side, the fact that the beggar and I were the same, was putting me in serious jeopardy of remaining one of Dr. Lenz's students. It's like wanting to continue to train with a top sensei but you found you put on an extra 50 pounds of fat. Yes, a great martial artist could compensate for an extra 50 pounds. But wouldn't it make more sense to go on a diet. My practice with the homeless was like going on a diet from arrogance. It works the same way. You lose it a little bit at a time. 

Hector: What was the result? 

Grandfather: I became happier. 

Hector: What else did you do? 

Grandfather: I began integrating the techniques suggested by the book. Certain things were easy. It was easy for me to contemplate the dreamlike nature of things. It was harder to practice 'Give all victory to others; take defeat for yourself'. 

Hector: It was harder to 'love your enemies' and to 'do good to those who harm you'. 

Grandfather: Exactly, it was particularly hard not to rejoice that when I was being loving towards someone trying to harm me I was actually 'heaping coals upon his head'. I was into the coals. But with time, the underlying reality becomes more real and this mind state become easier to avoid. 

Hector: It still seems strange. It's like you gave up being a warrior and became something else. Did you still work down on Wall Street or did you retreat to a ashram so that the world wouldn't devour your new compassionate self. 

Grandfather: Hector, don't be silly. I became a better warrior. There's no contradiction between being a warrior and the Bodhisattva approach. You're confusing love with permissiveness. It's like some parents that think that if they let their kid do anything he wants that he will be happy. The result is a very unhappy kid. No, people are happiest when they are provided the proper boundaries. As the I Ching says, 'Heaven above and Earth below.' It's not hard to have compassion and love for someone and still fire them. No, you become a better warrior because you can be attentive to what needs to be done. You don't burn up a lot of extra energy with anger around personal attacks. 

Hector: You said that the review of these books was a major recapitulation for you back in 96. What else did you do? 

Grandfather: I took off Christmas week to focus on the papers and I looked closely at the omens that appeared during the week. One of them was particularly powerful. 

Hector: What was that? 

Grandfather: Your father called me a couple of days after Christmas. He told me about a part time job he had been doing for the previous few months. He was working for a family with two boys with muscular dystrophy. He said that it was hard because he had grown to love the boys but unlike other disabled kids that he had worked with, he knew that these boys wouldn't get better, that they would die. This made it a lot harder. 

Hector: What did you say? 

Grandfather: I said that he should persist. While this situation was harder it would bring him much greater spiritual growth. But I also realized that this is what I had to seek out. 

Hector: What do you mean? 

Grandfather: After I read Crime and Punishment, I went down to Columbia hospital and began the process of becoming a volunteer. I thought it would be good to play cards or read to kids that were in the cancer ward. My conversation with Alex focused things. It was necessary to go beyond providing amusements or diversions. I needed to learn to love these children. I needed to learn to provide love expecting only death and suffering in return. 

Hector: That sounds really difficult? 

Grandfather: It was easier than eight years of penal servitude. 

Hector: Well, what happened? 

Grandfather: That's another story and it's getting late. Perhaps we can end your visit with something that Dr. Lenz used to quote, 

What we call the beginning is often the end And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from