There is an Ocean of Bright Clouds. There is an Ocean of Solemn Clouds
—by Robert Reese
“There is an ocean of bright clouds. There is an ocean of solemn clouds.”
-- Dogen Zenji, (1200-1253) Kyojukaimon, Commentary on the Precepts
I won’t die
I won’t go anywhere
I’ll be here
But don’t ask me anything
I won’t answer
— Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1491)
John Fletcher, the affable friend of Monterey Bay Zen Center, died last month at Community Hospital for the Monterey Peninsula surrounded by friends and family. Mr. Fletcher was beloved for his amiable personality, enthusiasm for good food and conversation, and genuine commitment to family and friends.
Despite remaining on the fringes of traditional Zen practice and the Monterey Bay Zen Center sangha, Mr. Fletcher’s warm-hearted approach to community and friendships remained closely allied with the Bodhisattva ideal. A recovering alcoholic, John’s own particular form of self-healing often took on the spiritual characteristics associated with the Bodhisattva’s compelling vision. These principals would serve John for the last years of his life and prove equally valuable to those nearest him as they formed and shaped and contributed to his numerous relationships.
Though frustrated by declining health over the last few months, it was John’s extravagance of spirit that would persist throughout his life, making robust friendships across the Monterey Peninsula’s social and recovery strata’s. The following text, in the form a letter to John, serves as a partial reflection on his life and practice.
John,
The weather turned cooler this week and Carmel Valley is speckled with bronze leaves and wavering fall blossoms; the sun is low in the sky, bright and hard on the eyes. Flocks of small birds snap wings against the blue sky as they wheel toward the Carmel River mouth lagoon. But perhaps you already know this and I’m speaking to the converted, here, because you have already joined the singing life of wind and autumn clouds, trees and geese and the river lagoon.
I sometimes believe all of us had been, to date, blessed, or charmed, or just plain lucky—players on a good roll, reasonably untouched by the negative effects of an adolescence devoted to indulgence. But that’s not quite accurate, either. We all know the toll substance abuse has taken on friends, family and ourselves. Still, even in the past few years, there seemed an avoidance of our own mortality: caught up in days that seemed too full, too varied, too crowded with events and deadlines and commitments and over-commitments. When we spoke on the phone four days before you went to the hospital for the last time, there seemed to be a distinct sense of possibility in your voice. As though your days (and mine) would be too-full forever. Isn’t that what we sometimes tell ourselves? But that’s memory. Memory fades, memory adjusts, and memory conforms to what we think we remember. You seemed to be putting a team together in support of your physical and spiritual health. Death, for both us, seemed to figure remotely (or not) into the future. At the time, I believed, we would be around for one another. I was wrong.
A few days after you died, someone said you were considering becoming a priest. Whether this was a serious intention or a passing impulse, I cannot say, but nor can you imagine how much this idea elated me. Priesthood, in some form, seemed a natural trajectory in your spiritual evolution. I pictured you a merry and sympathetic priest in the model of New York’s Archbishop, Timothy Dolan. You know the model: the florid, red-faced Irish priest, bantering, joking, and cajoling his way down the street, working the rooms and into people’s lives. Though not apparent at first, the archetype of priest seemed to be emerging and forming itself in your life as a natural result of replacing intoxicants with spiritual pursuits.
“A bodhisattva is an ordinary person who takes up a course in his or her life that moves in the direction of buddha. You’re a bodhisattva, I’m a bodhisattva; actually, anyone who directs their attention, their life, to practicing the way of life of a buddha is a bodhisattva. We read about Kannon Bosatsu (Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva) or Monju Bosatsu (Manjushri Bodhisattva), and these are great bodhisattvas, but we, too, have to have confidence or faith that we are also bodhisattvas.” This text is from Opening the Hand of Thought, by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, a Soto Zen priest and one of the most highly regarded contemporary Japanese masters.
As distinct from a Buddha, the bodhisattva, (enlightening being), vows to not settle into final buddhahood until she or he can assist all living beings throughout time and space to realize their own awakening. The ideal, then, of the bodhisattva archetype contains certain dominant traits or characteristics of an enlightening beings. And, while not possessing any of these qualities in some romanticized, celestial form, you always seemed to be on the verge of enacting aspects of the bodhisattva ideal. It is challenging to say where, precisely, good-heartedness recasts itself into the compassion of Avalokiteshavara Bodhisttva, or where skillful- means becomes the personification of Vimalakirti, but I’ve seen you exemplify both these traits on a number of occasions to the point where, as Uchiyama Roshi says, you were “an ordinary person who takes up the course in his life that moves in the direction of Buddha.”
At the same time, John, by assigning you these qualities as examples of the bodhisattva archetype, I’m not proposing you are (or not) a bodhisattva. Rather, the point is that each of us has the capacity to enact the bodhisattva’s traits. The capacity is available to us all; my intention is only to illuminate its activity in an intensely human life. Bodhisattvas in our midst are modest, invisible and anonymous. Having opened their hearts through illumination or surrender or both, the bodhisattva humbly expresses and fosters awakened practice with, and for, others. Sometimes we cannot see the bodhisattvas, nor can they see themselves.
I won’t die
I won’t go anywhere
I’ll be here
But don’t ask me anything
I won’t answer
The importance of this poem is that Ikkyu’s audience was just like us today, wondering where you have gone and what it means to be alive and dead. When we spoke on the phone, you were certainly alive, but perhaps you knew the time was near. Perhaps you knew weeks ago when I saw you jubilantly greeting customers at Home Depot. Conceivably, there was a foreshadowing in your voice, a sense of optimism paired with premonition as you watched the Braves and the Astros in the World Series. Maybe you knew then-—but you didn’t say. Perhaps you know now, but will not say.
Kosho Uchiyama, Roshi writes: “Most people live by their desires or karma. That’s what the expression gossho no bompu means. Gossho are the obstructions to practicing the Way caused by our evil actions in the past. Bompu simply means ordinary human being—that is, one who lives by karma. Our actions are dictated by our karma: We are born into this world with our desires and may live our lives just by reacting or responding to them. In contrast is gansho no bosatsu, or, a bodhisattva who lives by vow.”
This makes me think of your vows--the internal vows or intentions you made, spoken and unspoken, known and unknown. Your family and friends loved you. You can see that in the ways they talk about you, but I imagine you knew this when you were living. You were largely good, though as with all of us, not without internal challenges and hindrances. You were moving in a good direction. You looked out for your family. You were the ally for many. In many things, your family and friends are proud of you, satisfied, and have now retreated to the warm distance from which that worth and contentment comes. The people who thought they could see right through you never quite did you justice, because they never acknowledged the determination to be better than you actually are, which is challenging and well meant.
Joe, your brother, said that when you were on vacation in Hawaii, you would get up before anyone was awake and walk on the beach. I can picture you with a small profusion of early-risers, couples, children and dog walkers. The Trade Winds beginning to gust over Maalaea Bay from the northeast. You are on the beach in your New England Patriots sweatshirt and shorts, squinting into the rising sun. The beach has a strong, clear smell, though you know the smell is never as strong as when you are actually in the water. The soft smell of salt air and coffee and the distant smell of sandalwood and mangroves. Like an Irish priest on St. Patrick’s Day, you are greeting and chatting with everyone out for a stroll: kids and their parents, perfect strangers, dogs and your higher power. The tropical, flat-bottomed clouds takes on color by the rim of the sky. The water changes from molten grey to soft teal, the mid-day heat and the smell connects you to the sea, softens the difference between what leaves off and what begins. You are home.