I want to share with you something that I read today, from the book Going to Pieces without Falling Apart by Mark Epstein, M.D. : "She remembered how relentlessly he pursued her as she grew up, how needy he as. He would become irate whenever she disappointed him and she finally had to close herself off from him in order to find some peace. 'The defense is what hurt,' she told me. Greta's breakthrough reminds me of an old Zen story about an aged Chinese monk who asks permission to seek enlightenment in an isolated cave. Taking his robes, his begging bowl, and a few possessions, he heads out on foot into the mountains. On his way he sees an old man carrying a huge bundle. This man is actually the bodhisattva Manjushri, who appears to people at the moment they are ready for enlightenment. 'I am going to the furthest mountains," the monk tells Manjushri, 'to find a cave. I will stay there and meditate until I die or realize awakening.' Manjushri then drops his bundle onto the ground, and instantly the monk is enlightened. He, too, has put down his whole defensive self, the entire burden. But he's still a bit confused. 'Now what?' he asks Manjushri. And the bodhisattva, smiling, silently reaches down, picks up his bundle and continues down the path. Putting down our burdens does not mean forsaking the conventional world. It means being in that world with the consciousness of one who is not deceived by appearances. Once Greta, for instance, had recovered her love for her father, she could continue to fend him off with forgiveness instead of rancor. She still needed her defenses, but she was not imprisoned by them. And as the newly enlightened monk realized when he saw Manjushri pick up his bundle and head back to town, everything had changed but nothing was altered." What do you think? What stuck out to you about this passage? What came up for you? How did it make you feel?
