A vow is an orientation. The power of a vow is that it turns us in the direction of experiencing. It connects us to a bigger reality, one which we need to take on its terms. To do that, and be free, we have to become bigger ourselves. A vow to be conscious of death is an embrace of life. We become bigger than death, not by considering it an enemy, but by taking it into ourselves. I remember at my maternal grandmother’s funeral, the minister proclaimed ‘Death is an enemy.” I thought he was woefully wrong – that puts death ‘over there.’ Implicitly, in A Year to Live practice, we vow to turn toward death, as an opportunity to expand. Vows, of course, are another form of unconditional love.
And, these days, as a part of my ‘A Year to Live’ practice, I remind myself each day that all the people I meet are manifestations of unconditional love. Couldn’t be otherwise. Taking this up, straight away, I noticed how I go to sleep to my vow! In comes the trance of forgetfulness. How many people did I meet today, whom I forgot to practice my vow with?! Wonderful failure! That’s exactly the power of a vow. You become conscious of what you’re omitting. In the Buddhadharma, forgetting to practice your vow is not the problem – but giving up, that’s a problem.
And, vows are never private, even if no-one else knows you’re living by vows. Vows always imply others. It’s as John Makransky says in his Awakening Through Love: “Unconditional love and wisdom embodied in a person’s life are the most powerful forces for remaking the world we experience together and for holding open the door for others to learn similarly.” That’s a perfect excuse to give you the whole Alison Luterman poem (two lines of which I shared previously). It’s a safe bet that the old man is living by vow:
At the Corner Store
He was a new old man behind the counter, skinny, brown and eager.
He greeted me like a long-lost daughter,
as if we both came from the same world,
someplace warmer and more gracious than this cold city.
I was thirsty and alone. Sick at heart, grief-soiled
and his face lit up as if I were his prodigal daughter returning,
coming back to the freezer bins in front of the register
which were still and always filled
with the same old Cable Car ice cream sandwiches and cheap frozen greens.
Back to the knobs of beef and packages of hotdogs,
these familiar shelves strung with potato chips and corn chips,
Stacked – up beer boxes and immortal Jim Beam.
I lumbered to the case and bought my precious bottled water
and he returned my change, beaming
as if I were the bright new buds on the just-bursting-open cherry trees,
as if I were everything beautiful struggling to grow,
and he was blessing me as he handed me my dime
over the counter and the plastic tub of red licorice whips.
This old man who didn’t speak English
beamed out love to me in the iron week after my mother’s death
so that when I emerged from his store
my whole cock-eyed life –
what a beautiful failure ! –
glowed gold like a sunset after rain.
Frustrated city dogs were yelping in their yards,
mad with passion behind their chain-link fences,
and in the driveway of a peeling-paint house
A woman and a girl danced to contagious reggae.
Praise Allah! Jah! The Buddha! Kwan Yin,
Jesus, Mary, and even jealous old Jehovah!
For eyes, hands, of the divine, everywhere.
