Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Shabata Sensei disappear? It was at the Trident, I was standing at the checkout in the bookstore, and he was at the table in the back of the store. I looked away for a second, then looked back and he was gone. Then he was back again.
I told that story to Douglas Penick once and he said, yeah, that’s when he bent over to tie his shoes.
Now that I write this, it reminds me of the passage from Buddha in the Palm of Your Hand, where he says, if you’re on a train and a book falls down from the overhead rack and falls open in your lap, it’s very important to know that the book just fell off the rack into your lap.
And when we had that fire up at then Shambhala Mountain Center, right in the middle of transmission one of the tents in Vajra or Ratna campground caught on fire. Afterwards I asked the Sakyong about it, as in, people are saying it was a wisdom fire, can you comment? And he said, (besides that the fire people didn’t see it that way), that the world is communicating all the time, but don’t be flaky about it.
I think what these anecdotes are trying to say is that the world is communicating all the time, but don’t be flaky about it. In other words, before you buy into a notion, reflect if it’s really all it’s cracked up to be, but still be on the lookout for magic.
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