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In "The Hero with a Thousand Faces," Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, formulates a paradigm for one's life-journey: one awakens with a need to fulfill a purpose, perhaps yet unknown, and goes out into the world where he will encounter characters and forces which both aid and obstruct his path. The point of the hero's journey is to endure and learn something about himself and his relationship to the world; in doing so, he returns, bringing back a boon, something that benefits himself, as well as the society from which he came. The more salient point is that the characters the hero confronts--the ogre, the witch, the wise man, the fairy godmother--are, in fact, manifestations of his own internal mind-states, psychic archetypes innate in all individuals. This confrontation is central to the great stories of literature and legend, from Dante's trip through hell to Dorothy's romp to Oz and back; it is the Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree, resisting the forces of Mara; it is Joyce's modern Ulysses making his way through dreary Dublin.
It can be addressed even at the moment of death. In "The Tibetan Book of the Dead," reference is made to the "bardo" states, various intermediate stages of consciousness generally occurring after death and before one's potential rebirth. It is specifically in the "bardo of dharmata" where one's "soul" or energy--relinquished from its body--is bombarded with the parade of wrathful and peaceful deities, or where one can whirl through the six realms of existence, as well as the purelands of the buddhas and bodhisattvas. Commentators on the book, like Sogyal Rinpoche, state, like Joe Campbell, that it is important for the individual experiencing this display to realize that this, too, is simply a manifestation of one's mind, and that, if not clung to--either positively or negatively--one has the opportunity, here, for liberation. If this is not accomplished, one is reborn in one of the six realms of samsaric existence, depending on one's karmic burden.
Just as fascinating--and even more practical in its application--is the idea that such bardo states are replicated with each and every moment of ordinary existence; each waking thought, feeling, or action has a birth and a death, and therefore an opportunity to break the karmic chain and act with free-will, wisdom, and compassion, the attributes that make an individual a hero. It is the opportunity inherent in every moment, heralding the journey of today or the journey of a lifetime.
So as I prepare my cushion for meditation, and the journey I am about to take, I remind myself also of the words of T. S. Eliot, from "Little Gidding" in "The Four Quartets": "We shall not cease from exploration/And at the end of all our exploring/Will be to arrive where we started/And no the place for the first time." While this initially makes me feel like a Borgesian short-story character, or the poor guy from the movie "Groundhog Day," I have committed myself to being patient; for I've tried moving through life slouched in a chair, half-asleep with a beer in my hand, and that didn't work out well. And rather than feel like Estragon in "Waiting for Godot"--where even more than mere sitting and standing are portrayed as utterly meaningless--I will sit patiently, poised to pivot on each precious breath on whose wind I will travel, to a place I'm told I've been before, yet still need to go, to discover, again, what I presumably know but persistently forget: that I, too, am a buddha.
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