Stay New

"Mama, I don't wanna get old -- I want to stay NEW!" - J.L., four-year-old daughter of a client as she grapples with her first existential crisis.

Day 259. I went to a physician of western medicine today. He is a D.O., however, so it doesn't really count. Gassho, Dr. L for the way you practice medicine. I felt like a person rather than an insurance claim.

Mercury is retrograde. Again. Seems like I just got everything fixed from the last time that pesky little planet was out of synch. I am prepared: feeling healthily non-attached to the wayward meanderings of misaligned planets. Talk about something that is out of our control . . .

My last client of the day began her session by showing me pictures of her four-year-old, who is new to the concept of death. She accompanied her mother to the hospital for a diagnostic procedure, and saw people in wheelchairs and a couple of very old individuals. Kind of like Siddhartha, only at the tender age of four. J.L. is a fairly precocious child, and it didn't take long for her mind to leap from an anonymous construct to fear and worry about her parents dying, and - even worse - her own eventual demise. My client attempted to reassure her by noting that most people live to be very, very old, to which the four-year-old exclaimed, "Mama! I don't wanna get old. I want to stay new!" Instantaneously, I knew I had my quote for the day.

Four-year-olds are very Zen. I have been blogging for 258 days, meditating like a madwoman, shushing the Monkeys like a tour guide at the Smithsonian, and pouring over Zen texts like a manic monk, and this brilliant child categorically defines Buddhism the first time she sees an old folk. Hell, she probably hears the sound of one hand clapping.

Yes, J.L., we all want to stay new. Brand new. Unblemished, unsoiled, unaffected, untainted, unharmed, uninfluenced, unencumbered. Resplendent in our original face. Zen mind, new mind. If all of us lived each moment with the awareness that it is brand new (because it is), we could dwell joyfully in Reality, rather than slather it in delusion. If we could enter and remain within "Just This!" there would be no Old - only the present exists. We would have the enlightened vision that accompanies living in the now, free from the clutter that results when we juxtapose past experiences onto present ones. No thought no feeling no expectation: Simply LIFE. As it unfolds. In all its realistic splendor.

I want to stay new. It will likely be my mantra for the next several days, or maybe decades. I want to stand squarely in each moment, recognizing it for what it is: the universe giving birth to another perfect fragment of Now. Gassho, J.L. I'll meet you in Nirvana.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc