purification

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In the long-ago-and-faraway, there was a time when I would get up each morning, walk a mile or so from my New York apartment, and take part in the morning service offered at the Zen center I attended. The service ran from 6 to 8 a.m. or something like that and part of the service consisted of recitations and chanting. Day after day, week after week -- recitations and chantings followed by a period of zazen or seated meditation.

Day after day ... same thing, different day. Much of it became so in-grained that it could be like a half-drunk can of beer on the arm of a sofa ... a dulled and dulling reminder of the party that had gone on the night before. Over and over and over again. Spiffy Zen students (me included at the time) might say that our job was to learn how to be "in the moment" or something equally Boy Scout, but at 6 a.m. with a mind not quite functional ... well, tell it to the Marines.

And one of the recitations went like this:

All the evil [karma]
Ever committed by me
Since of old
On account of my beginningless
Greed, anger and folly
I now confess and
Purify them all.

I put "karma" in brackets because even after all these years I have not heard a convincing description of "karma" and think of it as more diverting and confusing than much else. "Karma" was part of the recitation, however, and I recited it in my half-awake, half-assed state. I recited it as I might pass by a fire hydrant on my walk to the Zen center ... eh.

I was not too concerned with my flat-beer, inattentiveness. I knew others had been caught in a similar net, as for example the morning when the jiki jitsu, the leader in the zendo, lost the thread when the six or eight of us were chanting The Heart Sutra in Japanese. He just lost the thread of the words and the whole, collective, dulled-down flow of the recitation ground to a halt and sputtered like a car about to run out of gas. Finally, someone in the group grabbed up a line, sent it into the room, and the rest of us followed along.

No, I wasn't alone. Others were dealing with the inattentiveness and boredom of repeating and repeating and repeating ... repeating to the point where what we were repeating had no particular meaning or impact or importance. It was fire-hydrant time and I think fire hydrants and their unassuming presence are part and parcel any 'deep-meaning' practice.

All of this is in the long-ago and faraway, and yet yesterday, with a freshness I could not explain, the purification chant reasserted itself in my mind. "All the evil [karma] ever committed by me ... I now confess and purify them all." There it was, bright as a penny that had been inadvertently scrubbed clean in a load of laundry. It didn't come back as one of those admonitory bits of gloom and self-flagellation  that spiritual persuasions can lay on.

It just sat there, bright as a bright penny.

An old friend.

And I was happy to see him.
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