How a chicken can fly: path to enlightenment

Gary Larson (art); Dhr. Seven (poem), Ashley Wells, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

A flood? Why didn't you fly? - I lost the balloon.

"Oh, how sad, Chicken Bob, to see you try.

They call you Fryer, but you're meant to fly."

He muttered, I thought, asked, "Hey, what the cluck?"

I sat and I pondered: What could be up?

My eyes lifted as thought-balloon drifted.

Wide pupils shifted, reading, it's scripted:

How bright the idea that balloon brought!

Better the bulb than the darkness of thought.

Now what if he rows as I provide lift?

I get him to float, won't he flap his wings?

Now "what if" is no way to live a life.

For what if I ask, and he but denies?

So sinched at the waist, a string through his strut,

Seatbelt fitted in haste, he levitates up!

The helium balloon wafted him high.

I said, "Daft bird, see, it's better to try!"

Analysis

What is at the very heart of wisdom?

-So, Seven, you're saying, through symbolism and Gary Larson's comic strip, that we should figure out a novel solution and try it?

Poetry is not symbolic. I'm just telling a story about a scared bird, Chicken Bob, who thought he couldn't. Then with a little help he could. It's like when I try to meditate, I can't. But with a little help, who knows. Once my teacher applied peppermint essential oil to my upper lip to keep my attention at the breath as it goes in and out (anapanasati bhavana). It worked. It was subtle, but peppermint is brightening and kept me awake and vigorous, yet not too excited as green tea might do. I would never have thought of that. "Plant helpers" can go a long way to bring us to the verge of samadhi and insight. But without a deva to point that out, it's hard for a fledging sitter or an old bird set in his ways to make progress.

O, hail, Kwan Yin, Goddess of Compassion!

-Ingenius! So you're saying everyone should try peppermint to advance their sitting practice.

I'm saying no such thing. I'm just telling a story about a scared bird, Chicken Bob, who thought he couldn't.

-Is he "Chicken Little," symbolically?

No, he's Chicken Bob.

-Ah, and is "flying" meditation?

No, meditation is meditation, generally of two kinds, initial calming and subsequently systematic practice with a purified mind to know-and-see.

-Know-and-see what?

Ultimate materiality (kalapas) and mentality (cittas).

-What does that mean?

There are particles of perception, and discreet mind-moments that form the stream of consciousness we take to be one thing when it's really part of an impersonal PROCESS going on. We take this process to be a "self," and we cling to it.

-Isn't it a "self"?

Heart of Perfect Wisdom (Prajna Paramita)

No, it's not-self. The Heart Sutra makes this clear: form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness are the Five Aggregates or "Heaps" clung to as self. But they are not self.

• Isn't it a self that clings to self? 
• -No, a "self" doesn't cling; ultimately speaking, form clings to form, feeling to feeling, perception to perception, mental formations to mental formations, and consciousness clings to consciousness. The whole entanglement is ignorance, avidya, and snapping out of it to wisdom, knowing-and-seeing, and right view is "awakening" or bodhi).

-What ARE they then?

They are impermanent, disappointing, impersonal (empty) phenomena arising and passing away. When we see that directly, we can let go.

-If we let go, is that flying?

Letting go is freedom. Enlightenment is possible in this very life, right here right now, because there's only now, right?

-The past is not real? The future is not real?

One is a memory, one is a dream, and all that's real is right now. This present moment is real and it's all that's ever been real. Forget the rest. Be at your best RIGHT NOW.

-Is that what Ram Dass (Harvard's Dr. Richard Alpert) was saying when he famously said, "Be here now"?

I don't know. But it's good advice. Be. Here. NOW.

-Isn't that Eckhart Tolle's advice?

I think it might be Byron Katie's advice. Do The Work, asking the Four Questions. That'll bring you into the present moment, that is this NOW.

-Then who needs help?

Sometimes we need help. People weren't just spontaneously awakening until the Buddha arose and pointed the Way, revealed the Path, gave step-by-step instructions to make an end of all suffering right now.

-Those instructions still exist?

Yes, they do. Each teacher might put a spin on them unique to each individual's capacity and unique experience, but the fundamentals are right there in the ancient texts.

-Which texts?

The Pali canon is pretty reliable. Pa Auk Sayadaw has renewed their vitality and cleared the cobwebs and so has awakened students like Beth Upton, Ven. Dhammadipa, Sayalay Susila, Sayalay Dipankara, Tina Rasmussen, Stephen Snyder, and my own erstwhile teacher. Even Ayya Khema and her student Leigh Brasington, with the help of a Sri Lankan meditating monk, made it back to the original right-stillness (samma-samadhi) practices for calm. Vipassana is a little more involved.

-But the Heart Sutra is in Sanskrit not Pali!

It is, and isn't it amazing that it is the mostly widely read "discourse" in Mahayana Buddhism, yet no one gets what it's about?

-What's it about?

Ven. Sariputra, foremost in wisdom

"Emptiness" (shunyata). The mark of things is that they are all impersonal. All composite "things" (dharmas) are anatta, "not self." The "perfection of wisdom" is the direct realization that all things are impersonal -- particularly those five things clung to as a "self": form (body) [arrangements of the Four Elements or characteristics of materiality]; feeling (sensation), perception (all we perceive), mental formations (all the other psychological stuff), and the hat trick consciousness (awareness) [the four characteristics of mentality].

-And that made you think up a bird poem?!

No, there's no symbolism. I'm just telling a story about a scared bird, Chicken Bob, who thought he couldn't.