Purple Flowers
And
that I did reach a new perspective became especially palpable after this last
semester in Madhyamaka reasoning. Through the help of the Indian Buddhist
pandit, Chandrakirti’s text the Madhyamakavatara and especially through our
wonderful Lopon Shedrup Gyatsho, I can’t help but notice now a subtle
difference that is hard to pin down or communicate. Yet, imagine the following:
Imagine
you had had an eye disease since the beginning of your life, which made you see
small purple flowers anywhere you looked. Like everything was happening for you
behind a curtain of purple translucent flowers. And you didn’t even consider it,
because it was such a habitual way of apprehension that it just had to be like
that. There wasn’t any other way! However, one day you happen to mention this
experience to a friend and you find out that it actually is not a permanent
condition. You hear that there is medicine to cure you from the flower curtain
of your vision and that you are able to obtain that medicine. What would you
do? Especially given that the purple flowers actually were never considered being
a problem by you before?
Well,
if you are interested enough and you start to understand that these flowers are
a problem, you are going to try out the medicine! And if you do that regularly,
you probably can notice a shift in some way. The first one being to notice that
there are purple flowers in your vision!
Likewise,
after many days of contemplating and thinking about Chandrakirti’s explanation
that not one thing we experience is established by itself as such; it seems I
can’t look at my life in the same way anymore. Moments of noticing my clinging,
noticing my purple flowers, have increased! And I also notice more and more, how
my otherwise habitual way of apprehending my life, seems limited. Now there is
an option: a purple flower free vision! My enthusiasm and diligence to continue
to work towards such a vision has truly sparked. As I engage my next steps of
meeting family and friends during semester break, I can’t but feel grateful for
this spark of enthusiasm and purpose that came with the medicine of last
semester’s study. It continues to move me beyond measure. As I meet the
familiar environment of my life, things are not the same anymore. I know I have
walked on, into new perspectives….through a learning that doesn’t stay in the
book, but touches the mark of my being!
~ Kerstin (Shoho) from Germany
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