Locked Down with the Dalai Lama

          Woke up this morning musing about being locked down with the Dali Lama—made to stay at home, quarantined—with the Dali Lama. Wondered what that would be like if we were one of his household.

            That musing led to the next level—what would it be like to locked down, quarantined, AS the Dali Lama?

            “No matter how many beings there are in the universe, may they all be liberated, may they all be happy, “

            That’s the Bodhisattva –Happy Buddha—wish when blowing out the birthday candles, and when he thinks of his work here on earth. (To read what the Dalai Lama actually said about how we should act here amid the coronavirus, see this article. )

            These musings led me to remember the little church in a little village in England we were staying. Attached to the church was an old “anchorite” cell.  An anchorite—for those not familiar with quirky medieval Christian customs—was a man, or more

Anchorite cell

often a woman (anchoress) who determined to spend the last years of life sealed up—bricked up—in a small room attached to the church with only a small opening for food to be brought (and waste to be removed) and another small opening, at least in that cell, to view the altar, or some other object of contemplation.

            In the church in our little village the small slot for viewing looked across the church sanctuary to the altar and the eternal flame (perpetual candle) which was burning there.

            “It was a type of retirement plan, a 401K of the time,” the deacon joked who gave us a tour. (The anchorite stayed sealed in the cell until he or she died.)

            Locked down with the Dalai Lama would seem to be a delightful, once in a lifetime (so to speak) opportunity. In the Buddhist tradition there are many monks and nuns who have spent years and years in caves or solitary mountain hermitages, “going within,” rather than going about.  Locked down with the Dalai Lama one would be forced—graced—with the necessity of halting one’s outwardly horizontal  movements  and instead explore the vertical dimensions, the subtle forms of consciousness that are ever present but which  we tend to ignore, disregard. Some of those dimensions in Tibetan Buddhism are referred to as “bardos.” The Dalai Lama, even better than the church deacon, would be a wonderful tour guide for such forced vertical explorations.

But the Dalai Lama himself, like the anchorite, would have different work to do while locked down. They say that when one is forced to be still, forced to be silent, before the experience of the “Happy Buddha” arrives, (or the experience of the Eternal Christ, or the Eternal Love, as was the quest of the anchorites) – before that experience happens, the demons appear. In its mildest form, lock down someone—or a bunch of some-ones—for a period of time, and they start to get cranky. They are forced to wrestle with the “demons of crankiness.”

Woke up musing that the Dalai Lama in lock down is undoubtedly working/meditating on the subtle planes to help ease and make harmless the worldwide “demons of crankiness” (and other demons) which the worldwide lock down has inadvertently engendered. After all, that’s his life’s work.

But with the lock down, we are all “anchorites” to one degree or another. In China, they literally “sealed people in” where infection was discovered. Most of the world is not that disciplined. But most of us are feeling “locked in place.”  

Waking this morning I recognized this might be a good time to join the Dalai Lama, and the anchorites, to help counter the influence of the demons of crankiness who now seem afoot in the land. (Some of them carrying AK-47’s and storming the state houses!)

To work with the cranky demons, both within and without, I simply need to keep my attention focused on the light, the candle burning, symbolizing eternal love, the presence of the Buddha Mind, Happy Christ. This light, by its very presence (Presence) dissolves the silly machinations—darknesses– of the demons of crankiness.

I don’t always wake with such musings. More often, I’m more concerned with what I’m going to eat today. This morning, however, I woke with the Dalai Lama and anchorites—and the work they do—on my mind. Here in lock down, not much else to do but share such musings, and keep my attention on the inner grin. 

And then head to the refrigerator.