Forty-eight days after my stepfather passed away, I had a dream. In the dream I am in the house I grew up in, the house where my mother still lives. My mother and two of my uncles are there, and also several people from the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. People are standing around the living room and the kitchen, in circles chatting. It’s some kind of social gathering. I notice that there’s a conversation about death; someone is dying, someone that I know. At first I’m upset that no one told me.
“Why is this happening? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”
“We didn’t want to upset you,” they say. “We weren’t sure how to bring it up. They are dying for the same reason that your step-father died.”
“Why is that? Why did he die?” I want to know.
“He died because he worked so hard,” they say. “He never stopped working for other people, and didn’t take enough time to relax. This is why he died before his time.”
I’m struck by the bittersweet taste of a noble death, the inevitability, the choices made—a sense of the weight of one’s life.
I’m struck by the bittersweet taste of a noble death, the inevitability, the choices made—a sense of the weight of one’s life. I sit down at the kitchen table and cry. I can only see the blackness of my face in my hands, but I feel my mother’s arm around me, comforting me.
Regaining my composure, I look up again—most of the assembly from CTTB is gathering around the front door; they are assembling to walk. We all line up in rows, with the monks and nuns in front, and walk down the road. The ground and the trees are covered with snow outside, and the road has been sanded and plowed. We walk up the road on the same path where my mother and I would walk shortly after my stepfather’s passing.
The road my mom and I use for walks.
The assembly kept going up the road, past the point where my mother and I would usually turn around, chanting “Namo Amitabha, Namo Amitabha” together. I begin floating above the assembly instead of walking with them. I try crossing my legs, and discover that in doing so I can decide where I am floating. We continue that way to the end of the road, with me floating along above the assembly as we all chant.
There is a palpable vibration and a low humming sound. The humming becomes a drone that vibrates all around me.
At the end of the road is a store, and we all stop there and take a break. I wander inside the store—there’s an interesting sculpture there that has floating parts. I play with it a bit, and discover that actually, none of the parts are held firmly in place—I can move them all around, but then when I let go they are held in place as if by some kind of magnetic field. After playing with the sculpture for a bit, I start looking around at other things and realize that actually, everything is like this. There is a palpable vibration and a low humming sound. The humming becomes a drone that vibrates all around me. A few of my friends from the City are sitting in a circle now, teaching our chant to some people that happened to be at the store. The low drone harmonizes with the melody, “Amitabha, Amitabha….”
I woke up with the chant still in my head, humming it for the rest of the day. Later in the afternoon when I had a chance to sit down, I went up to the University to write down the notes on my computer.
My arrangement of what I heard.