The vernal equinox has arrived with its promise of spring and more light in our lives. The plum tree in the backyard has started bursting a riot of white blossoms from its thin branches, prolific in its transformation from bleakness to fragrant fullness. A pronouncement that the dance of Spring has begun!
The garden is entranced. With March came both the lion and lamb! Crazy nice yesterday - 75 degrees - in our zig-zag of cold and warm weather. Low 30’s are still in the forecast. Lightning and thunder lit up the skies last night. Fat drops of rain plunked against windowpanes. New reddish shoots of my coral peony have grown 4 – 5 inches just overnight.
I’ve been thinking of Hi’iakaikapoliopele. She is the one who makes all the green things to grow on the new lava fields. Her name itself is a teaching. Hi’iaka held in the bosom of Pele. Hi’i means to hold or carry in the arms. Aka is the embryo at the moment of conception. To hold an embryo, the energy of conception, in the warmth of love.
Hi’iaka is the youngest sister of Pele, the Volcano Goddess. She was carried as an embryo by her sister Pele, kept warm and incubated, as she was brought to Hawaii.
Hi’iaka began as something carried, not yet born, not yet named, held by another’s warmth until the time came.
In Zen we speak of bodhicitta – the awakened heart mind – as something that arises within us before we know what it is. Shantideva, the great 8th century Mahayana teacher, describes bodhicitta as the most precious thing in the universe. He says it is the mind that is oriented, at every moment, toward the awakening and liberation of all beings. Not as a project. As a direction – the way a flower is oriented toward light not by deciding to be, but by its very nature.
It is held in us, embryonic by lineage, by the teachers, by the practice itself, until conditions ripen and it emerges. I always have spoken about generating bodhicitta – something that can be manufactured through practice. Now, I am reconsidering that phrasing.
Instead of 'generating' bodhicitta, it is what we already are beneath the accumulated weight of self-protection and fear. Practice is the fire that burns that weight away. What emerges has been there all along, embryonic - emerging in the world already oriented toward the welfare of others – toward healing, toward dancing, toward keeping your word across impossible distances.
Bodhicitta is the carried embryo in each of us. It does not need to be created. It needs to be recognized, warmed, held and then when the time comes, it dances. It’s not effortful compassion. Not generated warmth. Just clear, unobstructed movement of awakened mind through a body that has stopped insisting on being separate from the elements.
May you feel, in this season of turning, what has been carried in you all along.
Malama pono (take care of body, mind and heart),
June Kaililani Ryushin Tanoue
Kumu Hula, Roshi
P.S. Recent talks at our Zen Life & Meditation Center:
June Tanoue, "Sacred Dance & the Bodhisattva Vow" https://youtu.be/CMP_DmpWgSE
June Tanoue, "Facing the Mountain" https://youtu.be/bW80BqnJFPw
Diane Bejcek "Nobody's Perfect" https://youtu.be/ffF82wWjFqA
Barbara Peterson""Dying to Live: Demystifying Hospice" https://youtu.be/r-rJWjLsSqo
Julie Kase "Basic Goodness" https://youtu.be/wUjgBy2CDTA