As our vision opens we can ask extraordinary questions. What patterns and stories have been given to us in this life? What individual form have we taken this time? What are the myths and stories we have inherited, and what stories have we continued to follow in the face of the mystery

Is our religion materialism or Marxism, is it hopeful or fatalistic, is it isolating or is it communal? Is ours a religion of kindness or of harsh justice? Do we follow a religion of sin and struggle, one of suffering and salvation, one of grace? What is the source of redemption in the story we follow?

We participate in the creation of our story. We can enact the personal myths of warrior, goddess, eternal adolescent, great mother, king or queen, master, slave, or servant of the divine. Is our life a story of riches or poverty, inwardly or outwardly? Are we the victim, the lost soul, the one who suffers, the prodigal son, the workhorse, the conqueror, the mediator, the nurturer, or the sage?
 
In all these stories we choose and are chosen. The circumstances of our life bring us certain motifs, tasks to fulfill, difficulties we must face, and lessons to learn. We turn these into our story, our song. As we listen deeply we can hear what part we have chosen, how we have created our identity in the face of the mystery .Yet we must ask: Is this who we are?

Spiritual practice is revolutionary .It allows us to step outside the limited view of personal identity, of culture, and of religion and experience more directly the great mystery of life, the great music of life.

The aim of meditation is to open us to this here and now. Alan Watts put it this way:

We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition; If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in taking a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

Here around us always is the mystery. This great song has joy and sorrow as its warp and woof. Between the mountains and valleys of birth and death, we find every voice and every possibility. Spiritual practice does not ask us to place more beliefs on top of our life. At its heart it asks us
to wake up, to face life directly. In this way, our eyes and ears are open. Zen master Seung Sahn, on visiting the site of the Buddha's enlightenment in India, wrote:

Once a great man sat beneath the Bodhi tree. He saw the Eastern star, became enlightened. He absolutely believed his eyes, and he believed his ears, his nose, his tongue, body and mind. The sky is blue, the earth is brown, and so he was awakened to the truth and attained freedom beyond birth and death.

Buddhist practice offers us one of the greatest of human possibilities- the possibility of awakening. In this we must listen to the whole song, as Siddhartha did. We will see how. difficult this can be. We will encounter all the stories we have held on to to protect ourselves from the suffering of life. We will face the stories of grief and fear, the contracted sense of self that withdraws from the inevitable hardship and sorrow of life. We will sense emptiness and loss in the lack of permanence of ourselves and all things. For a time in practice, all creation may appear to be a limited and painful story, one in which life is impermanent, filled with suffering, and difficult to bear .We may long to remove ourselves from its pains and vicissitudes. But these perspectives are only the first part of our awakening.

The second part of the great story of awakening is not about loss or pain but about finding the harmony of our own song within the great song. We can find peace and freedom in the face of the mystery of life. In awakening to this harmony, we discover a treasure hidden in each difficulty. Hidden in the inevitable impermanence and loss of life, its very instability, is the enormous power of creativity .In the process of change, there arises an abundance of new forms, new births, new possibilities, new expressions of art, music, and life-forms by the millions. It is only because everything is changing that such bountiful and boundless creativity exists.

The hidden treasure in the sufferings, sorrows, and pains of the world is compassion itself. Compassion is the heart's response to sorrow. We share in the beauty of life and in the ocean of tears. The sorrow of life is part of each of our hearts and part of what connects us with one another. It brings with it tenderness, mercy, and an all-embracing kindness that can touch every being.

For the Tibetans there is an ancient practice of becoming the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, of transforming ourselves into a being with a thousand arms and a merciful heart who reaches out to heal the sorrows and bring comfort to all who are alive. In the end, it is not the sorrow of the world alone that matters but our heart's response to it. In the emptiness of all things-the magical insubstantial way in which all things arise and vanish, lacking any abiding or fixed self-is hidden the gift of non-separateness. One scientist calculated that if we take a deep breath today, in ninety-nine times out of a hundred it will contain a molecule from Julius Caesar's dying breath. What is true physically is true of our hearts and actions as well. Our lives are inseparable from our environment, our species, our relations with the stream of all that exists. Spiritual practice offers the possibility of discovering the greatest story
of all-that we are everything and nothing.

It is possible to sense everything as connected in creativity and compassion and to rest in the midst of it as a Buddha. All things are all a part of ourselves, and yet somehow we are none of them and beyond them. When T. S. Eliot wrote these simple words of prayer, "Teach us to cafe and not to care," he captured the possibility of honouring the preciousness of each moment while knowing that it will soon dissolve in the great song. We can hold each flowering of life with an open heart without grasping, we can honour each of the notes of the great song destined to arise and pass with all things.

The difference between one who is awakened and one who is not is simply a question of whether or not the person grasps at a limited story. So the Buddha said, "Those who are unawakened grasp their thoughts and feelings, their body, their perceptions and consciousness, and take them as solid, separate from the rest. Those who are awakened have the same thoughts and feelings, perceptions, body, and consciousness, but they are not grasped, not held, not taken as oneself."

A HUNDRED THOUSAND FORMS OF AWAKENING

When we do not grasp at the stories of our life, an extraordinary possibility opens up for us to turn all of our stories, whether inherited or chosen by us, into the path of a bodhisattva. We have already described the bodhisattva as a being who takes form in every realm, in every possibility, and uses each to develop boundless compassion and awaken the inter- connected and liberated heart. Out of the mystery of all stories, in a hundred thousand forms and circumstances, the bodhisattva vows to enter into them and bring awakening to all beings.

One of the greatest Buddhist masters said:

For as long as space endures and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide in every form, bringing my heart to dispel the misery of the world.

This does not mean that we create a grand or inflated vision of ourselves. It is not "we," our "small self' as an individual, who will save the world. Rather it is a letting go of being anywhere else. We are willing to be just where we are, to enter all aspects of life, and to discover there is justice, compassion, patience, and virtue to be found in every realm.

There is no predetermined story for a bodhisattva to follow. To live as a bodhisattva is to touch the spirit of the Buddha within us and to allow that to shine through our own individual life. Buddhist history is filled with a thousand different accounts of how the bodhisattva spirit can manifest in the world. There are bodhisattvas everywhere. One of my teachers lived in a cave for many years, silently radiating compassion to the world. Another was a very wealthy businessman who also taught meditation retreats to tens of thousands of students worldwide. His master was a high-ranking cabinet minister in Burma who got the government officials in his offices to meditate at the start of each day.

One of the greatest of modern Buddhist yogis and masters was a woman who lived a simple householder life in Calcutta with her daughter and grandchildren. She taught in her one-room apartment and gave amazing blessings to all who visited her. Another was a nurse who worked with the dying. Another a teacher of young children. Some were stern, some were humorous. Some lived out in the forests, others in monasteries and ashrams, others in the middle of great cities with ordinary jobs and ordinary families.

In all of them a spirit of wisdom and compassion ran through their actions. They acted from their Buddha nature, which connected them with all beings. They did not grasp their own personal stories but lived connected to the whole. Recently some red-robed Tibetan lamas visited New Mexico. A student offered them all hot-air balloon rides. But they arrived in the morning to find that there was room for but one monk to fly. A reporter covering the event asked the others if they were disappointed. "No." They smiled and continued, "He's going for all of us." For a bodhisattva there is joy in the happiness of all beings.

Through the spirit of the bodhisattva our identity shifts away from a hundred thousand forms and circumstances, the bodhisattva vows to enter into them and bring awakening to all beings.

One of the greatest Buddhist masters said:

For as long as space endures and for as long as living beings remain, until then may I too abide in every form, bringing my heart to dispel the misery of the world.

This does not mean that we create a grand or inflated vision of ourselves. It is not "we," our "small self' as an individual, who will save the world. Rather it is a letting go of being anywhere else. We are willing to be just where we are, to enter all aspects of life, and to discover there is justice, compassion, patience, and virtue to be found in every realm.
 
There is no predetermined story for a bodhisattva to follow. To live as a bodhisattva is to touch the spirit of the Buddha within us and to allow that to shine through our own individual life. Buddhist history is filled with a thousand different accounts of how the bodhisattva spirit can manifest in the world. There are bodhisattvas everywhere. One of my teachers lived in a cave for many years, silently radiating compassion to the world. Another was a very wealthy businessman who also taught meditation retreats to tens of thousands of students worldwide. His master was a high-ranking cabinet minister in Burma who got the government officials in his offices to meditate at the start of each day.

One of the greatest of modern Buddhist yogis and masters was a woman who lived a simple householder life in Calcutta with her daughter and grandchildren. She taught in her one-room apartment and gave amazing blessings to all who visited her. Another was a nurse who worked with the dying. Another a teacher of young children. Some were stern, some were humorous. Some lived out in the forests, others in monasteries and ashrams, others in the middle of great cities with ordinary jobs and ordinary families.

In all of them a spirit of wisdom and compassion ran through their actions. They acted from their Buddha nature, which connected them with all beings. They did not grasp their own personal stories but lived connected to the whole. Recently some red-robed Tibetan lamas visited New Mexico. A student offered them all hot-air balloon rides. But they arrived in the morning to find that there was room for but one monk to fly. A reporter covering the event asked the others if they were disappointed. "No." They smiled and continued, "He's going for all of us." For a bodhisattva there is joy in the happiness of all beings.

Through the spirit of the bodhisattva our identity shifts away from a small sense of self, from the stories that say: "I'm deficient." "I need that." "I'm angry." "I hope to get this." As these small ideas drop away, there arises a ground of trust that does not seek to control or possess life. Instead, as we become present for the mystery of it all, a great happiness and contentment arises. Our heart becomes more transparent, and the stories around us become clear.

We can acknowledge the stories from our parents, from the society around us, from our schools, from our mentors, from the media. We can see the suffering that arises when we are lost in them, grasping, unskillful, acting out a drama without understanding its lesson. Then we learn to listen as Siddhartha did-without binding ourselves to one particular story, without being only the victim or the conqueror, only spiritual or only materialistic-we can listen and discover how one breath affects the whole dance and how the whole dance around us affects each of our breaths. We can discover the possibility of stepping out of a story or of transforming the myth from one of sorrow to redemption, from one of difficulty to the triumph of compassion and forgiveness.

The awakened heart can answer the key question posed by Buddha gosa, the great Buddhist sage, "Who can untangle the tangle of this world?" We discover a miracle: Every creation of mind and heart can be transformed.

The work of the bodhisattva is to untangle the confusion and sorrows of the world. Discovering our compassionate heart can untangle our sorrow, awakening the eyes of wisdom can untangle our delusion. If you wonder what this transformation can mean for the world, remember Margaret Mead's statement, "Don't think that a small group of awakened individuals cannot change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

When we discover how we create the painful stories of our life, we can then learn to untangle them. In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughter- house-Five, there is a description of what happens when one night a World War II movie is accidentally shown backward.

American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses, took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. ...There were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

When the bombers got back to the base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States, where factories were operating day and night, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did the work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

The sorrows created by the mind can be untangled. We can release our sorrows ilnd open to that great song which is beyond all stories, to the dharma that is timeless. We can move through life fulfilling our part, yet somehow free in the midst of it all. When the stories of our life no longer bind us, we discover within them something greater.

We discover that within the very limitations of form, of our maleness and femaleness, of our parenthood and our childhood, of gravity on the earth and the changing of the seasons, is the freedom and harmony we have sought for so long. Our individual life is an expression of the whole mystery, and in it we can rest in the center of the movement, the center of all worlds.