Chapter 18: Bless Us

“Heaven bless us.”

Everyone has said it. Saying it, one doesn’t necessarily believe in heaven, nor necessarily know what heaven is; there is just something on one’s mind one can’t keep hold of oneself, and so one says it. Before an exam, as the child goes into the exam hall, the parent at the gate says: bless him, bless him. The operating theatre light is on, and the people outside wring their hands: heaven bless us. Driving in thick fog, unable to see the road, the driver mutters: please, let nothing happen.

There is no “I” in this sentence. But very often a very deep “I” is hidden in it: I am not enough myself. I can’t keep hold, I can’t manage, I have to rely on someone outside.

People take many shapes in this.

The day before an exam, a student goes to a temple to burn a stick of incense, and ties a red string round his wrist. He doesn’t entirely believe, but if he didn’t go he wouldn’t feel easy.

A mother has eaten no meat all her life. Not that she doesn’t like meat; when her child was small he fell ill, and before the bodhisattva she made a vow: if only the child got better, she would never touch meat for the rest of her life. The child got better, and she has kept it for thirty years.

Someone has given himself to a master. Whatever the master says, he does; if the master says he isn’t ready yet, he feels he isn’t ready yet. In his heart there is a sentence: without the master leading me, I can never get there.

Someone believes in something and says: believe and you are saved; don’t, and you are finished. He prays every day, keeps the rules, dares not get one wrong; get one wrong, and he fears being left behind.

Someone meets with very bad luck, and others say: this is your karma, a debt from your last life, and you must repay it. He believes it, feels he carries a ledger, and all the suffering of this life is repayment; only once it is cleared can things be well.

Someone has trained for many years to open something up in his body, to cleanse some dirty place. He says: once I’ve opened it up, once I’ve purified it, all will be well.

And someone believes in nothing, and when he meets something he can’t get past, says: it’s all fate. What is in your fate, you can’t escape; what isn’t, it’s no use asking for. Having said it, he sighs.

These shapes don’t all come from the same place. Some burn incense and pray out of gratitude: having received much in their days and not knowing whom to thank, they thank this way. Some revere a master because they truly admire the kind of person he is and are willing to learn from him. Some keep a set of rules because they like to live clearly like that; some believe in something because a group of people together singing, eating, looking after one another—those days themselves are good. None of this can be called fear, and this book does not call it fear on anyone’s behalf.

But often enough, hidden in these shapes is the same assumption: I am not enough myself; I must rely on outside.

There is someone outside, bigger than me, more able; only if he blesses am I safe; only if he saves am I saved; only if he approves am I clean; only if he arranges do I have somewhere to settle. Or there is a ledger outside, recording what I owe, and only when it is cleared am I whole; there is a road outside, led by the master, written in the scriptures, kept by the rules, and only when it is walked to the end do I arrive.

This assumption is often rooted in an earlier fear: the fear of no one looking after me. When people are small, they really do depend on grown-ups to survive; a child lying in bed with a fever is most at ease knowing someone is beside him, someone will look after him. Grown up, that fear doesn’t go; only “the grown-up who looks after him” is swapped for heaven, the bodhisattva, the master, fate, a ledger, a set of rules.

First one thing must be made clear: none of this is false.

Burning a stick of incense, tying a red string, the heart really is a little steadier for a while; the next day, going into the exam hall, the hand doesn’t shake so much. That mother who has eaten no meat for thirty years: her devotion is real, and it has kept her thinking of her child all her life, thinking of him very deeply. Following a good master really does teach what you wouldn’t find feeling your way for ten years alone. Living by rules really does keep people from many mistakes, from hurting many people. Being with a group who believe the same thing, singing, praying, looking after one another, really does make people less lonely.

All these are things really happening in this place, with real consequences, and they can truly change a person’s days. There is no need to laugh at them, nor to take them apart as superstition.

This book does not oppose these practices, nor does it judge on believers’ behalf what is really in their hearts. What is spoken of here is only that one sentence: without it, I am not; without it, I am not whole; without it, I can’t be saved. The “salvation” spoken of in each tradition has its own meaning, and this book does not judge it; what is spoken of here is only one thing: being itself need not first pass through anyone’s redemption to qualify to be. Once this sentence is hung up, whatever it is hung on, a door that must first be passed through is set up outside being.

Without that stick of incense, would the student not be? Those two hours in the exam hall, he is fully being all the same: palms sweating, pen scratching on paper, a bird landing on the wire outside the window. The children who burned no incense are being just the same.

Had that mother not made that vow, would the child not be her child? Would she love him a bit less? Her thirty years of devotion are real; but the child getting better was the doctors, the medicine, the child’s own body, struck out together in a great occasion. Her devotion is one time of being, the child’s recovery another; both are full, and neither owes the other.

Had that man not followed the master, could he not get there? Get where? Being is not at the end of the road. Every day he follows the master is being; every day before he met the master is being too. A master can teach him a great deal, but no master can lead him from “not being” into “being,” because he has never been outside.

If that man doesn’t believe, is he finished? This moment of not believing is being too; the night he worries he is finished is being too. Believing and not believing are both within being; neither stands at being’s doorway to open the door for anyone, or shut anyone out.

And that ledger?

Things done have consequences; this is real. Hurt someone, and they hurt, hate, keep away; help someone, and they are warmed, remember, come back to help. Sow melons and reap melons, sow beans and reap beans; between being and being it is always like this, bumping back and forth, coming and going. None of this needs denying.

But if all this bumping back and forth is imagined as a ledger hung outside, recording every entry, and only when a person has cleared it can he be well, be clean, be whole, then once again a bookkeeper is set up outside being. There is no such bookkeeper. The suffering a person goes through is real suffering, with its causes and many entanglements; but it is not repaying a debt so that being will finally accept this person. Every day of suffering in this life is being; every day without suffering is being too. There is no need to clear anything first in order to count.

And the opening up, the purifying?

A body better trained really is more comfortable; a heart a little clearer really is more at ease. All this is good. But to say there is a dirty, blocked place in the body, and unless it is opened and cleansed, being is not whole and a person can’t get there, is once again putting being at the end of a road. Being doesn’t pick between clean and dirty, open and blocked. The blocked place is one time of being too; the hurting place is being too. There is no need first to become another body to deserve to be.

And that “it’s all fate”?

Those who say “it’s all fate” are often tired, and use the sentence to give themselves an account: it’s not that I’m no good, it’s that fate had it so. Beneath this sentence there is a bigger “I”: someone above who has arranged everything, a list already written, and everything follows it.

But days often don’t follow a list. A thing is struck out in a great occasion where very many things meet: that year’s weather, the traffic on the road that day, someone’s mood at that moment, one’s own hand at that moment. Some call it fate, some don’t; called so or not, what happened really happened. Only, to cover these causes and that moment of one’s own hand with “it’s all fate” is to make the thing smaller. Seen this way, a person is a little lighter: no need to feel someone is especially against him; and also a little heavier: his own hand at that moment was in the occasion too, and has its weight.

“It’s all fate” has another version, said in a calm tone: whatever heaven makes me, that I am; if it makes me poor, I’m poor; if it makes me ill, I’m ill; I accept it all. This is much easier than railing at heaven and earth. But it still falls a little short: over there, there is still a heaven giving; over here, still a me accepting. The giver and the accepter are still two; however readily one accepts, it is still a person standing there receiving something pressed on him by another.

Even this accepter can’t be found. A man injured his back at forty, could no longer stand for long, and gave up the craft he had worked at for twenty years. He often says: I wasn’t meant to be like this. But look for that “meant to be” him, and he can’t be found; after forty, the one going slowly down the stairs every day holding the banister is him, not a person who was fine, swapped for this one. A man made money in business, later lost it all and moved back into the old house; the years of making money were him, and these years after losing it all, squatting at the door of the old house smoking, are him too, not a rich man fallen into someone else’s life. At the very last breath, that falling is this time of being falling, with no second person behind taking it. The injured back has the causes of an injured back, the lost money the causes of lost money; these happenings need no one standing outside to vouch for them, nor anyone else standing on this side to receive the arrangement. It is just how it happened.

Nor does this mean things could only have gone this way. Had he seen a doctor earlier that year, perhaps his back wouldn’t have been so badly hurt; had that money not been invested, perhaps it wouldn’t all have been lost. These “if”s are reasonable to ask: thinking about them, comparing, remembering them, doing it differently next time, are all real and will all change what follows. Only what didn’t happen didn’t happen; it is not a me as I was meant to be, standing outside, waiting to be swapped back in.

Nor is this resignation to fate. There is a resignation that still keeps, underneath, a me who “could have been otherwise,” only no longer fighting. There are also people who accept fate only in admitting the past can’t be changed and not wanting to wear themselves out over it, and that is another matter. What is said here is that there is no such me underneath: falling ill and going for treatment is you; being poor and going to earn is you; being bullied and standing up to fight is you; unable to win, sitting there crying, is still you. Each is done wholly, hurts wholly, because behind each there is no one else there working out whether this time was worth it.

Then what does a person rely on, in the end?

On this place itself.

The word benzai was spoken of earlier: ben does not mean there is an intact foundation underneath, always set there; ben means not coming from elsewhere. Being is not issued by anyone, not blessed into being by anyone, not saved back by anyone, not obtained in exchange for clearing a ledger. It is, moment by moment, and each moment rises from itself.

The word yongzai must also be said precisely. Yong, “ever,” does not mean there is a thing that never changes, never breaks down, hidden behind everything. No such thing can be found, nor is one needed. Yongzai says: whenever there is a moment, that moment is being. The moment a person is born is being, the moment he is old is being, the moment the last breath goes out is being too. It is not held up by something spanning all of time; what is being in every moment is this moment, now becoming, now moving.

This place needs no one outside to vouch for it. It has no outside.

Nor is this to say people don’t need others. All their lives people can’t do without others: fed, held, taught, saved, caught by a glass of water, a word, a hand reached out. All this is real, real touching between being and being. Only all this touching is within being; there is no one standing outside being whose nod must be waited for before a person is.

Things no one has ever blessed are always being too.

A seed falls into a crack in a rock; no one burns incense for it, no one prays for it. Rain falls, it splits by itself, pushes its root down and its shoot up. If it grows, that is struck out together by that rain, that bit of soil, that crack, and itself; if it doesn’t, that seed has been too.

Rain falls on good people’s roofs and on bad people’s roofs; falls at the temple gate, and on the wild tree by the road that no one tends. Rain doesn’t pick, and keeps no accounts.

An old tree on the mountain was struck by lightning once, half of it charred black. No one performed rites for it, no one warded off its misfortune. The charred half slowly withered; the other half put out new leaves the next year all the same. It is not clean, nor whole, yet it is fully being.

These beings don’t rely on outside. They rely on other beings: on rain, on soil, on light, on the trees beside them. These reliances are all inside, bumping back and forth, none able to do without the others; but none is a hand reaching in from outside.

That mother who has eaten no meat for thirty years grew old. Her child grew up long ago and lives in a city far away. One New Year he came home, and as he was leaving, she slipped a protective charm into his wallet, folded very small, and said: keep it with you.

The child smiled and said: Mum, I don’t believe in this.

But he didn’t take it out. For many years after, that charm stayed in the inner pocket of his wallet, worn pale, its edges fraying. He changed wallets several times, and each time he moved it into the new one.