I love kayaking in floods. We got a lot of rain this week, and the last few days I'd been getting really restless, because my work commitments didn't allow me to get out on the Potomac river. I finally got out on the river this afternoon. Paddling into a flood is exhilirating - I know the river well, but the floods are a whole different experience.
It was raining when I put in, the parking lot covered in 2-3 inches of mud left by the high mark of the flood. To get to the river, I follow a stream through a tunnel under the C&O canal. The water was about 3 feet up, not enough room in the tunnel to use my paddle, so I pushed my way through, using the roof of the tunnel. The stream was a slack-water, flooded to the level of the river, and when I came out of the tunnel, the small stream I usually have to scrape through, following the deeper parts, was a broad channel, full to the banks.
I passed a heron, and behind him, on the bank, a doe and her fawn watched me, eyes wide, surprised to see me. The flood must have pushed them up into the hills, and they'd likely not seen many people the last few days. When I pulled into the river, it was broad and wide, moving flat and fast, orange-brown with dirt. I pulled in close to the bank, where the water moves slower, and nudged my way upstream. The sun came out a few minutes later, the world suddenly bright.
I paddled through trees, the river swirling high on the trunks, my paddle brushing rain from the branches, river weeds tangled into the branches from the flood draping down like old man's beard, as if I was paddling in a bayou. In the summer, the river feels tropical, a dense green lushness.
Sometimes I'd be forced out into the main flow, and would have to fight the river. This is a pretty flat section, above Great Falls, so there aren't many real drops or rapids, which would have been impossible to paddle up, just a strong smooth laminar flow, that seethed as it strained against the trees and branches.
I started hitting harder currents in a section that's usually a zen garden of smooth-worn borders and young sycamores, a drop of an inch or two made for a hard fight upstream, paddling against standing waves, smooth streaming drops, reading the water for the slower spots, dancing my way upstream like a rock climber.
Paddling into a strong flow is an immersive grace, a balance of strength and skill. You have to keep your speed up, or like walking up a down escalator, the river will push you downstream and wear you out. And a small error or deviation will let the river swing you around and sweep you back, and then you've got to fight it all over again. The grace element is that this isn't a fight - the river is just Being - it will flow whether you're there or not. And so the best path is to Be with the River - flow strong!
I worked my way out into the main river, following the lees of submerged rocks towards an upstream island. It was an engaging goal, but I didn't know if the river would let me get there. The Potomac here is wide, half a kilometer (I measured it on google maps, but it felt like the travesty - the river here is just Wide), set in a low amphitheatre of forest, sycamore and river maple. I grounded my boat on a boulder washed by waves, sat buddha half-immersed in the flood, and flowed into the Heart Sutra.
I've been chanting the Heart Sutra for years now, learned it in meditation with an ecobuddhist group. I used to rage impatiently at each chanting, wanting it over with, used to analyze and dissect and critique. It took me a long time to find patience with it, and while I don't go to meditation now, and don't meditate regularly, there are times and places (often in nature) that are right, and I sit, and I chant.
The Heart Sutra has a long history, and has its respective merits (I guess - it's the only sutra I know). I've not done any research, and I've deliberately avoided going down the path of learned esotericism with Buddhism. There is what seems to me a black hole of intricate complexity in some forms of Buddhism that does not appeal to me. What I do know is that it's a conversation between a teacher and a student, but only the sayings of the teacher are included. All of my comments about the sutra are based on my (deliberately) limited knowledge.
The Boddhisatva of Great Compassion perceived the emptiness of all five skandas and passed beyond all suffering and despair.
The skandas are the human senses/forms of perception, and the Boddhisatva of Great Compassion is the teacher, talking to his student, Sariputra.
O Sariputra, form is no other than emptiness, emptiness no other than form. Form is emptiness, emptiness no other than form. The same is true of feelings, thoughts, impulse, and consciousness.
This is something that I feel is easier to experience on the river. On a basic level, presence is defined by absence, and vice versa. The river is where it is because the rocks are where they are. And the sky is where it is. And the water shapes the rocks, and the sky feeds the river, and vice versa.
When I'm on the river, I'm in the presence of something that has been happening for longer than humans have existed. The river flows, the rocks endure. This happens on a scale that I'm not really capable of comprehending. And as relevant as the experience and my presence here is to me, I'm a blip, from the perspective of the river. A leaf in autumn.
I slipped off the rock, and back into the water, working my towards the island. Sometimes the water would push me back, and I'd rest in a lee, arms bright with effort, the sun on me, mist rising from the land from the storm. And then I'd try another path. Sometimes, even the lees (sheltered spots where a rock or cross-currents created areas where the water was calm) were hard to hold onto. Other times, I'd find myself balanced on the crest of a wave, steady in the middle of the chaotic flow.
Coming up to the island, I had to face the brunt of the river. If there was a lee, I couldn't find it, just a straight push against the current, the river a tapestry of flows interweaving. And then I was in the shade of the trees again, worked up to the prow, waterflow searing against the banks, climbed up on a deadfall tangle of flood-debris logs, balanced my way out on an overhanging log until I was sitting ten feet above the water, watching the flow. And chanted the sutra again.
O Sariputra, all dharmas are empty. They are not born, nor annihilated. They are not defiled nor immaculate. They do not increase or decrease. So in emptiness, no form, no feeling, no thought, no impulse, no consciousness. No eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind. No form, sound, smell, taste, touch, or object of mind. No realm of sight, no realm of consciousness. No old age and death, nor extinction of them. No suffering, no cause of suffering, no path to lead out of suffering. No knowledge, no attainment, no realization, for there is nothing to attain.
Sariputra asked a question, and this was the answer. I believe that the question was along the lines of "What form does the dharma take?". The dharma being the guidances that direct proper human action, according to buddhism. Sort of a trick question - if nothing exists, then does buddhism exist?
I remember once chanting the sutra in an alcove of a narrow slot canyon in Utah, and just as I said "no object of mind", my voice resonant against the water-shaped curves of the rock, a bird flew past at eye-level, curving tight with the canyon, both of us startled by the sudden presence of the other. Today there's a spider near me, large as the span of my palm, black and yellow, an orb-weaver with a web so broad that a tiny spider has built its own web within the span of one of its cells. A moth flutters in, tangles briefly, then frees itself. The flood was higher than this debris, and I wonder where the spider spent that time.
For a long time, I meditated because I wanted to attain something. I wanted to be magically changed. I wanted to be fixed, I wanted something more than what I had, and I thought that there were secret insights, spiritual transformations, that I could achieve through buddhism. Now, when I chant the sutra, I mostly notice my breath, the experience of saying the words. When I'm in a wild place, alone, I chant loud, powerful, feel the sutra as a resonance, a vibration, ripples and waves. I notice the place where I am, the life around me. I'm grateful for the moment.
I balance my way back across the logs, slip into the boat, and flow downstream, fast now, streaming with the river, through waves that crest and break over my boat as the sun moves behind the clouds, the water suddenly colder, the forest layered with mist, clearer in the diffuse light. I share the river with cormorants, floating low in the water, sleek dark heads, or drying themselves on the few logs that are still above the river.
My boat wallows with the water I've taken on (I forgot my spray skirt), sluggish so I have to stroke harder to hold my line. It's joining the river. I paddle towards a small island, with a cluster of sycamore trees, and a colony of cormorants. They're awkward flyers, and I don't like disturbing them at dusk, when they're drying off for the night, so I avert my gaze, try to minimize my disturbance as I approach, and pull up on a log at the prow of the island.
Cormorants are dark when wet, dry to a lighter brown, with a cream underbelly. They hold their wings out to dry like they're making an offering. There are 40 or 50 in the trees of this island, a large cluster. I pull the boat up, heavy with water, and hold it as it drains, then sit and chant again, watching the river. The cormorants fly to and from the trees behind me like thoughts passing.
All Buddhas of past, present, and future, through faith in Prajnaparamita, attain to the highest perfect enlightenment. Know then the Prajnaparamita is the great Dharani, the radiant, peerless mantram, the utmost supreme mantram, which is capable of allaying all pain. This is true beyond all doubt. Proclaim now the highest wisdom, the Prajnaparamita.
Prajnaparamita basically translates to "Perfect Wisdom" (according to wikipedia). After proclaiming that everything doesn't exist, and that there's no way for us to escape the human experience (I'm being facetious here), it turns out that this is the path to enlightenment. Which would I guess be confusing for someone who still aspires to enlightenment.
But I don't. I don't want to spin off the wheel. I really like the world. I like being here with the cormorants, I like being on the river, I like floods and droughts and seasons and everything inbetween. I don't chant the Heart Sutra because I want perfect enlightenment, I chant it because it's right sometimes for the place where I am, and maybe I'm chanting it for the birds as I stretch out my arms, and then pick up the paddle and join the river again as the sun breaks through the clouds, the world suddenly bright, grey and green and orange and brown, water sky forest clouds.
Paddling past a larger island, I watch a wild turkey disappear into the undergrowth, and then a beaver on the bank peers at me for an instant, close up, 10 feet away, and then slips into the water. I see him again a bit further downstream, nibbling on a branch in the water, and he seethes at me, somewhere between a hiss and a growl, stands his ground as I float past, through serpentine coils of long narrow islands, and then back across the open water to the stream where I put in, chanting the sutra one last time as I pull hard against the water, caught in the flow and moving slow as the sun sets.
Gate Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Boddhisvaha.
Gate Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Boddhisvaha.
Gate Gate, Paragate, Parasamgate, Boddhisvaha.
The Mahaprajnaparamita Riddhaya Sutra.