CHAPTER FIVE
REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE
A FRIEND SENT ME A PHOTO of a beautiful star twinkling in the night sky. “I found an old picture of you,” she wrote. “Here you are a trillion years ago.” When a star explodes at the end of its life, it scatters its elements throughout the universe, and that is what forms planets. We’re literally made of stardust. It really was a picture of me, and of everyone.
On the opening night of my first meditation retreat, Jack Kornfield began his talk by quoting from a famous text: “O nobly born, remember who you are.”1 When I heard those words, something deep inside me was touched, unlocking memories of another time and place, if not another dimension. Somehow, I was reminded of my real self. Now, whenever I lead retreats, I tell people I’m simply reminding them of what they already know and who they truly are. The Buddha said we’re all buddhas by nature, but we’ve forgotten. Unlock your memory and reconnect with your true self.
The root word buddh means “to wake up.” It’s a mind state, not a person; it’s someone awake to their true self. You don’t have to identify with any religion or even understand Buddhist teachings to appreciate this idea. There have been millions of awakened beings in the past and there will be millions more in the future. Buddha nature means that at the core of every human being is the clarity, radiance, compassion, and all-knowing wisdom that is our truest essence. We’re really like that, but our radiance can be obscured. Meditation practice is to uncover the jewel in the heart of your lotus—to wake up.
Truth can never be destroyed, but it can be forgotten. It’s crucial that we begin to wake up and remember. My soul friend and wise elder Alice Walker once said, “The main way people give up their power is by thinking they have none.” It’s easy to forget your light and your innate goodness, especially if you’re a person of color, LGBTQ, or someone in a marginalized group. We get trapped in lies that we, and others, repeat—in the form of religious ideologies or in white supremacy, misogyny, and other forms of discrimination. I feel it is my sacred duty to remind you of your beauty, and I will do so until my last dying breath. Every human being of every ethnic background, gender, or sexual orientation, is at their fundamental core radiant, wise, and inherently buddha.
Many years ago, a good friend and I went on a spiritual pilgrimage to India. We were joined by other friends along the way. We visited Lumbini, where the Buddha was born; Varanasi, where he gave his first Dharma talk; Kushinagara, where he passed away; and Bodh Gaya, where he attained enlightenment. Bodh Gaya is in Bihar, the poorest state in India. The streets there are packed with beggars, hungry children, neglected animals, and piles of trash. Despite all that, it’s one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in India, and it draws thousands and thousands of visitors every year from every corner of the world. At the center of Bodh Gaya there’s a beautiful park with a garden, a huge, dome-shaped shrine called a stupa, and the great Bodhi tree, which is a descendant of the tree Siddhartha sat under when he attained enlightenment. Bodh Gaya is a deeply moving place to visit and it stands as a reminder, a symbol of our own infinite potential.
Around the Bodhi tree, there’s a large grassy area where teachings, gatherings, and ceremonies are held. At any given time, hundreds of people are doing full prostrations as they face the tree. When you do full prostrations in the Tibetan style, it’s like a yoga sun salutation. You place your palms together, fingers pointing upward, and then touch your hands to your forehead (your third eye), your heart, and finally you stretch out on the ground facedown. Bowing is a practice of surrendering your ego every time your forehead and your heart touch the earth. My friends and I spent hours there every day, meditating, talking, and reflecting on the life of the Buddha. On our third day, an impulse arose in me to offer 1,008 prostrations, 1,008 being an auspicious number in Asian traditions, and my friends encouraged me to do it. So, the next morning I began.
I arrived as soon as the park opened and found a nice spot with an available prostration board, and next to me was a smiley Tibetan woman who must have been ninety-years old. Not long after I began, hundreds of monks and nuns began prostrating alongside me, all of us facing the great Bodhi tree and bobbing up and down with full ceremonial exertion. Small pictures of the Buddha were placed everywhere, and a radiant-looking man in brown robes was purifying our prayers with a huge incensor while chanting Om Mani Padme Hum, Homage to the Jewel in the Lotus. Clouds of sweet-smelling smoke billowed in every direction. On the far side of the park, another group of monks were chanting the mantra that completes the Heart of Wisdom Sutra. Gate Gate Paragate Parasamgate Bodhi Svaha, “Gone, Gone, Gone Beyond, Gone Altogether Beyond, O What an Awakening, Hail!” It is one of my favorite prayers, representing the perfection of wisdom, wisdom beyond wisdom.
After about fifty deep prostrations, I began to feel muscle strain, but I had committed to offering 1,008 bows, so I soldiered on. Every time I did another fifty, I’d stop for a breath and then continue. The devotional energy in the air was palpable. It was a religious marathon, all these people prostrating hour after hour. From time to time, some sweet person would come by with a gigantic tray offering everyone chai, and most of us would take a break to enjoy a cup of delicious, spicy Indian milk tea.
I went back to bowing, and after a while began to wonder, “What am I bowing to? Why am I doing this? Why am I even here?” I’d stop bowing, reflect for a moment, and say to myself things like, “I’m bowing to end suffering.” I kept having inner conversations like this and responding. “Freedom,” “Refuge,” and on and on. It was getting increasingly challenging physically, but a kind of power was building inside me, and tears began to flow.
The heat of the day was intense, but I wasn’t stopping and no one else was either. Through the sweat and the tears, I continued to ask, “What am I bowing to?” and respond, “Faith in something bigger than anything I’ve known before.” Thoughts of being black, unwanted, and a woman all began to rise. “That’s a big story,” I told myself, “but there’s a much bigger story,” and I continued to feel the power of prayer and stayed with it. I prostrated for hours—even the next day, when I got up and went to the Bodhi tree again, I was still in a deep, reflective state: “Who am I? What am I bowing to?”
My friends were circumambulating the stupa and could see me bowing in the sea of people. I was in this profound state of absorption, looking up at the tree, tired, but continuing to prostrate, when I heard a familiar voice shout out, “Go Springers!” I looked up and saw my friends cheering me on, and I was like, “Right. Thanks guys.” I was in the deepest moment of my life, and they were shouting, “You can do it!” Even that became part of my inquiry, and it made me cry. As I kept prostrating, it finally dawned on me, “I am bowing to something that can never be destroyed.” I too have within me the potential to be free. In that moment, I saw the jewel in the heart of the lotus, and it was my own goodness, my own compassionate heart. No one can take that light from me because it’s indestructible.
In that moment, I realized that we all have a great power inside of us. We each carry immeasurable reserves of wisdom and courage. We have our share of suffering, but we are more than that. We are more than our stories, more than our traumas, more than our suffering. The seed that the Buddha uncovered is within you, within me, and within every living being. It is the seed of innate truth and it only needs to be nourished and watered. We are the sons and daughters of the universe. I bowed so much that day I thought my arms would fall off, but I kept going, bowing to the power that is within all beings.
We must remember who we really are. We are not just the story we’ve lived so far; our life is an epic tale with many chapters—many lifetimes—and we are here on the brink of time. To remember who we are is to reclaim our power, our truth, and our heart! César Chávez framed it this way, “Once change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.”2
If we lose touch with our innate beauty and no longer see the truth of who we are, we must remember to look deeply within until the jewel in the lotus reveals itself again. It’s difficult not to get carried away by the stream of media, politics, friends, and family. Meditation practice doesn’t change anything around us. It simply reminds us who we already are—and that can change everything. The Buddha describes his teachings as a path of awakening that got covered over with leaves and debris. If we don’t walk on the path and clear it once in a while, the way will be forgotten. Like any forest path, it has to be maintained and the signposts have to be reestablished. The Buddha didn’t invent the path. He discovered what he and others had forgotten. This truth is ancient, perhaps older than the universe. Faith reminds us to believe in something bigger than our story line.
There was a golden statue of the Buddha cast in Siam (now Thailand) in the fourteenth century and installed in a temple in Ayutthaya, one hundred miles north of Bangkok. In the eighteenth century, the Ayutthaya Kingdom was invaded by Burma, so the statue was plastered over and painted to prevent it from being stolen. The temple remained in ruins for almost two hundred years and the statue was forgotten. In 1955, as it was about to be moved to a new location and the statue was being taken from its pedestal, the ropes broke, and it fell to the ground. At that moment, some of the plaster chipped off, allowing the gold Buddha underneath to be seen. The plaster was carefully removed, and when the statue was restored, its power and dignity became a source of inspiration for the local community and for people from all over the world.
About ten years ago, I was on a six-month retreat at the Forest Refuge, a small center in the woods in Massachusetts that’s part of the Insight Meditation Society. I’d been sitting with a number of Burmese monks and was having a crisis of faith. “I can’t do this anymore,” I thought. I felt I had nothing left and wanted to get out of there. I didn’t want to be with my mind anymore and I lost faith in myself and the path. I had worked myself into a frenzy and was having a complete meltdown.
We’re typically discouraged from reading on retreats, but I went into the center’s library to check out the small collection of serious Buddhist books. I so craved words that I had been reading signs like, “Don’t put your shoes here,” and even the ingredients on shampoo bottles. I was looking for anything to distract myself. Walking among the library’s bookshelves, I spotted a little book almost hidden between two larger books, titled The Camel Knows the Way. I thought, “I’m going to read this!” I ran back to my room, book in hand, and dove into this magical story.3
It was a beautiful book about a woman and her twenty-five-year friendship with Mother Teresa. The author, an Englishwoman, was a philanthropist who would attend Buddhist retreats and then fly to Calcutta to work with Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity. She’d volunteer at the orphanages, help the sisters pick up people from the streets, and then in the evenings, she and Mother Teresa would have tea and talk about compassion. She wanted to have the Buddha’s heart of compassion and the Christ consciousness of love and service, and was trying to integrate these paths. After a few months in Calcutta, she’d feel overwhelmed by all the suffering and would run off, exactly the way I was feeling. During one of these times, she arranged to do a pilgrimage across the desert, as the Desert Fathers had done centuries ago.
She hired a guide and his son to accompany her, and the plan was that they would caravan through the desert on camels. Her guides spoke almost no English, just a few simple words, so they mostly just gestured and smiled at each other. They’d get up each morning as the sun rose, have tea and breakfast, and then ride on their camels. At sundown, they would stay at various places or make camp, and she would read and write in her journal while the father and son would build a fire and talk. Things went well for the first seven days.
On the eighth morning, the guides helped her onto her camel, smacked the animal on the butt, and the camel began walking. Then the guides took off in the opposite direction, and she became alarmed. “Where are you going?” she asked, and the father answered in English, “The camel knows the way.” “Oh, my God,” she cried out. “You can’t just leave me!” But they did.
For the next fifteen hours, she felt rage, then despair. “I’m going to die out here.” She saw no one and did not have faith the camel knew the way. She began crying and feelings of fear overwhelmed her. She couldn’t get off; she didn’t know if bandits would come and kill her. All these emotions and thoughts, one after another, were flooding her.
She had a small canteen filled with water and a little snack pack, so she wasn’t starving, and after hours of rage and panic, she started to think of the teachings of Mother Teresa. “If I’m going to die out here, is this the way I want to die? I want to live the teachings I’ve received, to benefit from all the work I’ve done.” She started to reflect on the conversations they’d had. Mother Teresa was always telling her, “Have faith, open your heart, trust,” and so she started to do just that. Mother Teresa always told her she had a beautiful heart, not only full of love but also wisdom. Until that moment, she hadn’t believed her.
Over the next few hours, her heart had a profound awakening. She thought of the teachings of the Buddha and all the great masters she’d met, of Jesus and Mary, and the magic of the life she’d been given, and a deep gratitude began to arise. She felt thankful for all the gifts, and in her mind she was preparing to die. She was certain the camel would wander forever until she was dehydrated, and she was preparing herself for that. “If I’m going to die, I’ll die with memories of the beauty I’ve had in my life, these wonderful teachings and this path. I’ll die with prayers of love and devotion on my lips. I’m not going to go out a screaming, hysterical mess.” By the time the sun began to set slowly and the sky was beginning to darken, she had completely let go. She was praying, holding Mother Teresa in her hand and the Buddha in her heart. She felt exhausted, when suddenly she saw the twinkling of lights in the distance. The camel continued walking, bringing her to the exact village, at the time designated on her itinerary. The camel indeed knew the way.
I had started to lose faith, to question everything, to feel the suffering, and I wondered, “What’s it all for?” I was lost and I’d forgotten my heart. The book about the camel reminded me of my path again and I rededicated myself to opening my heart. Our heart longs to be free. When it can’t be free, it gets sick. We have to bow to the deepest potential in ourselves, to find those layers and open to the truth and beauty of them. Buddha nature is not only in us but in every other living being as well. Faith is like a giant candle, with a wick that lights a thousand other lights, spreading out infinitely.
What camel in your life knows the way? Climb onto it and ride it home, into your deepest self. Unlock your ancient memories and remember your true purpose. It’s time to reclaim our place in this world. O nobly born, remember who you are. We are stardust. We are the sons and daughters of the Awakened Ones. Remember your heart of gold.
To go into the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
—WENDELL BERRY
