I am thinking about the bodhisattvas and about Jill Bolte Taylor's book "My Stroke of Insight". That when her left brain was “off-line” because of her stroke, her right brain saw everything as energy and everything as connected. And I am thinking of my daughter, who said that the idea of electrons and atoms made her nervous. “They are mostly space,” she said. “So how do they know to stay part of my finger when I touch a wall or a chair? They could just slide together.”
The bodhisattvas are the enlightened ones who stay present in the universe until everyone is enlightened. Every being. But the people who are bodhisattvas die, don't they? So how are they present?
They die, but their electrons and atoms do not. I am suddenly thinking of the electrons and atoms of a bodhisattva and the Christ as happy atoms. They are enlightened. They do not fear death for they do not die. Instead, death is a doorway, where the cells disperse and the atoms are freed. Freed to spread the word and free to spread love. I might have a happy electron from a previous bodhisattva and so might you. And that electron or atom tells the others, spinning and whirling with joy. Each bodhisattva atom tells the others. Be close, but not too close. Be together but do not smother. Dance with joy. Rumi's whirling dervishes spin in ecstasy, the ecstasy of the whirling electrons. Protons and neutrons held tight in the nucleus in intimate connection and the electrons attracted or repelled. Coming together and separating over and over in a dance.
It's not that we don't die and not that we as people should not grieve. The loss of this present form, yes, we should grieve that. There is an essay by an author who says that he was eight pounds at birth. So, he says, is that eight pounds him? What about the 150 he has gained since then? When he loses weight, is that part of himself that is lost?
And now everything is conscious, from the right brain perspective. Everything has energy and protons, neutrons, electrons. The energy of a rock, that feels slow to us. We must feel so flightly and quick and ephemeral to the rock. We eat and we are eaten, but the molecules dance on, eternal.
And then the Mass takes on another meaning: this is my body, this is my blood. These are the electons, the protons, the neutrons of an enlightened being. We eat the symbol of the bodhisattva, ingest their love and their wisdom, hoping that we will learn from them. It is symbolic and yet real too, that somewhere there are small bits of each enlightened being, and we hope to feel the joy that they felt.
Blessings all. Dance on.