Inbetween Siddhartha and the Buddha



My dear friend who still works at the place I spent my entire career before the disability, said that one of my co-workers mentioned to her yesterday that he still wanted to find a way to have a celebration in my honor.  How strange I thought that he would think about this now, more than a year after my sudden and silent departure.  These people where the only family I knew for more than twenty three years, and during that time I was their leader, Zen master, mother and friend.  In her words I could feel how much I was missed as I also missed the person who left so long ago.  I am not now the person they knew for all of those years, yet I am also not the person that I have yet to become.

At one point during his seeking, by all outward appearances, Siddharta was unrecognizable as the prince he once was though he was still not yet the Buddha.  As I look at my body that has wasted away, the dry brittle hair that is much more gray than russet and the hour to hour existence that is now my life I too am unrecognizable as the former chief information officer that shared my name.  Preceding the moment Siddharta found (or is it founded?) the middle way he chose a life of extreme austerity where his body was said to waste away until he was on the doormat of death.  In many ways I stand on that same Welcome mat.  Having not relinquished the notion of possession of a body and a mind and hoping I can still take these belongings with me to the other side, I stand a shadow of my old self with only a seed of the new Being that I am in the process of becoming.

buddhaSo how did Siddhartha wake up from his suffering and realize his true nature?  What Grace was available to him on the day that he was born the Buddha?  More importantly I suppose, where is it that I must go from here?  Too weary to travel, but still I am unwilling to sit right in the middle of this moment that is full of pain and tremendous weakness.  I know that I can never go back and be the business woman I once was, that part of my life feels almost like a dream to me now.  However I realize I am still asleep in the illusion that the mind maintains though it is not the deep sleep that marks the middle of the night, but at times it feels like the lightful pre-waking state that precedes the rising of the sun.

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