Three Moments of Love

Monks recite the sutras,
Their voices a cacophony.
We make love; afterward our whispers
Mock the empty chanting. - Ikkyu in the Zen Calendar (September 14, 2007)

Day 78. I have been thinking about Love all day.

Three memories bubbled up today while I thought about love. In each of them I was witnessing a moment of Great Love. I'll describe them in chronological order.

Before my older brother married my best friend, we went through a lengthy Jimmy Buffet stage. All of us were great fans of sun, sea, and - yes - beverages with salt around the rim. My brother would make these amazing tapes for our road trips with titles like, "Jimmy Buffet Goes to Padre" and "Jimmy Buffet: Summer Vacation 1983" and we would listen to his mixes for hours while zooming south on I35. Early one fall, I was sitting with my brother and my friend in their living room, waxing melancholy over the end of another summer. Jimmy Buffet's song "Steamer" came on. My brother met my friend's (his fiance) eye, and a look of such utter adoration came over his face that I almost wept. I couldn't recall ever being gazed at quite like that. He told me that this was the song they fell in love to, but we all knew he meant it was the first song they had ever MADE love to. Listen to the song -- you will weep, too.

I lived in Washington state in 1990, the year my son was born. He was the first grandchild. He had not been a planned event; at the time of his birth I had known his father for exactly 13 months. For many reasons, it was not the best time for my family, all of whom lived in Oklahoma. When my son was three weeks old, my mother flew alone out to see us. These were the precious years when you could still meet loved ones at their airport gate. I stood with my son swaddled in a pale yellow blanket at the end of the aisle of disembarking travelers. My mom was one of the last people off the plane. In what felt like slow motion, she approached us and I placed her grandson in her arms. My husband snapped a picture as she reached for him and hugged him to her breast. In the photo, my mom and I are beaming upon my surprise baby while tears of love stream down our faces. We still look at him like that from time to time.

A few years after my son and I returned to Oklahoma, I began attending a small Buddhist temple in Oklahoma City. Services were led by two women lay monks, except when a Japanese priest visited once a month from Dallas. I will never forget the first time I went to services led by the priest. We had chanted the Heart Sutra in English, and then meditated for a lengthy period. When meditation was over, we chanted in Japanese. I was not familiar with the chant, but soon became lost in the repetitive loveliness of it. On and on we chanted, our voices combining into a single melodic rhythm. The gong sounded and there was silence. My eyes were on the priest. He was sitting with his legs folded beneath him, and he bowed slowly forward, resting his forehead on the ground for what seemed like several minutes. As he gradually sat up, he whispered reverently, almost inaudibly, "Thank you, Buddha." A sob caught in my throat. The love in the priest's voice took my breath away. I wanted to love like that.

I met my partner three years ago today. Before we had known each other a year, our adventures together included: purchasing a home, doctoring three (3!) separate episodes of my oozing poison ivy, icing me down after a heat stroke with the bike team, adopting Ruby, watching me break my hand and dislocate my thumb in a gruesome mountain bike accident (these last two actually occurred on the same day!), traveling to Florida to visit his 87-year-old mother and four (4!) siblings' families (all of whom, I learned, vote and worship quite differently from me), and parenting my teenager while he passed from sixteen to seventeen. It was not a low-maintenance year.

Three years to the day later, I just glanced at him like my brother looked at his fiance, my mother gazed upon her grandson, the priest knelt before Buddha. This is the man who has listened to 77 blogs. The one who has to get up at 5:30 a.m. when I've typed until midnight. The one who was raised Baptist and now tiptoes silently when I am on my cushion. We've had many great moments of love. I hope we have many, many more.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc