In the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition, when one completes any kind of elaborate visualization practice, the entire visualization should be dissolved, bit by bit, into emptiness. This dissolution is to prevent one from becoming attached to the beauty and power of the visualization. The process of dissolving simulates the experience of dying for an aware individual who, it is said, can remain attentive as the elements that make up consciousness and form slowly dissolve. It is also said that one's entire life is like an elaborate visualization. In order to both prepare for the inevitability of death and to work with attachment to the forms of this life, from time to time, one should also practice dissolving one's life in its current manifestation.
The apartment is empty but for our four suitcases. My final morning beverage (a rather elaborate affair in and of itself involving coffee, unsweetened cocoa powder, sweetener, and mint extract) has been prepared and is slowly being consumed. Goodbyes have been said with an array of complex emotions. Yesterday, I drifted around Harvard campus, slipping through crowds of ever-present tourists, even sitting for four hours in front of the pdf-maker, like a ghost. A few raindrops sprinkled my white shirt. The pink roses embedded in a hedge of greenery looped over a Cambridge fence shed teardrops. Already my four years as a student here seem like a barely-remembered dream. At 4:45pm, an airplane will lift me up out of Boston, through the gray cloud cover, and I will hang in that odd half-space so peculiar to long airplane flights where time and space both seem to stand still, for fourteen hours. The trappings of this life here have been dissolved.
In my final meeting with my advisor, I told him I would miss him. He smiled and told me that in Sinhala, there is no word for "goodbye." Instead, there is a phrase that means both coming and going simultaneously. Whenever he had to leave his teacher in Sri Lanka, the teacher would say this phrase and whenever my advisor returned, as he did many times, his teacher would look up and simply say, "You've come."
So. I'm not going to say goodbye. In Tibetan, the person who is leaving says to the those who are staying, "Ga ley shu,"ག་ལེ་བཞུགས which roughly means "stay happily." The person who is staying says to the one who is leaving, "Ga ley pey," ག་ལེ་ཕེབས which means "go happily." So, to all of you, my friends and family, I say "stay happily!" I love you all.
The apartment is empty but for our four suitcases. My final morning beverage (a rather elaborate affair in and of itself involving coffee, unsweetened cocoa powder, sweetener, and mint extract) has been prepared and is slowly being consumed. Goodbyes have been said with an array of complex emotions. Yesterday, I drifted around Harvard campus, slipping through crowds of ever-present tourists, even sitting for four hours in front of the pdf-maker, like a ghost. A few raindrops sprinkled my white shirt. The pink roses embedded in a hedge of greenery looped over a Cambridge fence shed teardrops. Already my four years as a student here seem like a barely-remembered dream. At 4:45pm, an airplane will lift me up out of Boston, through the gray cloud cover, and I will hang in that odd half-space so peculiar to long airplane flights where time and space both seem to stand still, for fourteen hours. The trappings of this life here have been dissolved.
In my final meeting with my advisor, I told him I would miss him. He smiled and told me that in Sinhala, there is no word for "goodbye." Instead, there is a phrase that means both coming and going simultaneously. Whenever he had to leave his teacher in Sri Lanka, the teacher would say this phrase and whenever my advisor returned, as he did many times, his teacher would look up and simply say, "You've come."
So. I'm not going to say goodbye. In Tibetan, the person who is leaving says to the those who are staying, "Ga ley shu,"ག་ལེ་བཞུགས which roughly means "stay happily." The person who is staying says to the one who is leaving, "Ga ley pey," ག་ལེ་ཕེབས which means "go happily." So, to all of you, my friends and family, I say "stay happily!" I love you all.
Aloha! :-)
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