The Guns and the Jade Buddha

(Repost from my first blog in honor of greeting the new year with our eyes open)

I remember the room with the toy closet. It was my father's bedroom in my grandfather's house. The desk, the electric keyboard…there were a few of my father's things he kept in his childhood room at his father's house.

There was a dresser with a number of jade sculptures including a sitting Buddha...he was smiling. This Buddha was rather large. In my memory he sat at least 18 inches tall. I liked the way the jade felt...so soft and tough at the same time. It was a curiosity to me -- what was this Buddha all about? How does Buddha fit into life? I was an avid reader and I read as much as I could find about it and surely my learning about other cultures, religions and spiritual practices began there.

I also remember the gun racks. There were two, each holding at least a dozen antique shotguns and rifles. It was hard to even look at those racks as a young child. The intention of their presence filled the whole house, not only that bedroom. The guns created the bass notes for everything I felt while being in the house: they resonated with the rhythms of cold violence. At the heart of this beating pulse was a darkness upon which the potentials of beauty, learning, and even spirituality could not be laid.

Instead there was this dichotomy; this incongruity. All still incomprehensible today.

My father was a man I never knew; one no one ever really knew...and there is no possible way to know now.

Who might he have become had he been raised by different people? As today I stand on the razor's edge, Krittika, with certainty I see -- he would have been more like me. He would have understood the darkness as a vehicle for transformation and for reaching higher good instead of using it in the ways that he chose. He would have been fully human; but he was not. He might have been knowable; but he was not. Still, I remain grateful to him for all that I am. Only because of who I am must I stand on that razor's edge. Only because I am there do I know both darkness and light.

I watch shadows play in the brilliance of the day; I squint at the brightness that creeps into the darkest of corners of the night. I remain in balance...I remain aware. I remain knowable.

I remain present.

The guns and the jade Buddha: they are in the same room.

Be ever mindful. Walk with joy.
___________

Vajrapani (artwork by Dhyana Zagri) -- Vajrapani, Guardian of the Dharma, is the Destroyer of obstacles. He is one of 3 celestial bodhisattvas or archangelic protectors. A bodhisattva is one who has chosen to reincarnate in order to show the path to Nirvana or enlightenment. Vajrapani is the holder of the Diamond Thunderbolt or Vajra (symbolizing the power of compassion) an emblem of the concentrated power of the Buddha and the Vajrayana way. He is said to be the last Buddha to appear in this world cycle, wears long snake necklace and tiger skin loin cloth, symbolizing the conquest of anger. In his hand he holds the Vajra or Dorje in Tibetan, which is the quintessential symbol of the ‘diamond vehicle’ or the Tantric Vajrayana Buddhist path.