"Jeri and I hadn’t spoken for a year. It had been a classic girlfriend falling out. She had moved from Utah to the Pacific Northwest, and we weren’t connecting by phone very often. I was working a new job that demanded my attention, and I was probably less available than I had been before. She had become much closer to Randee, a mutual friend of ours, through their frequent phone calls. This resulted in a bit of jealousy and awkward triangling between the three of us, as well as some misunderstanding.
Matters were complicated by the fact that Jeri had a new boyfriend whom I didn’t like much. Add a dose of friendship fatigue that sets in over ten or fifteen years, and there you have it: the perfect recipe for a falling out. I guess something needed to shift between us, and when we couldn’t find a way to talk it through, we just quit talking. Maybe you have been through something similar. (As is often the case, no one was really to blame, but it felt like she was.)
Suddenly, after a year of us not speaking, she was back in Salt Lake for the weekend. She called me and said, “Let’s put up the dogs and have a drink.” “Well, uh, sure, of course,” I said. Her invitations were always hard to resist; I loved her unconventional approach to things. But after I hung up, I experienced a rush of hurt and vulnerability that I couldn’t sort through. I wanted to get together, but at the same time, I didn’t want to touch back into the pain of our estrangement. I assumed it would be awkward between us, and when I tried to imagine talking over the past year, my mind quit. There was no sense in trying to go over it or talk it through. So I sat there bewildered. What do I do?
I looked over at the large statue of Kanzeon Bodhisattva sitting on my dresser. Kanzeon is the Goddess of Compassion in the Buddhist tradition; in China she is sometimes known as Kuan Yin. Her name means the “One Who Hears the Cries of the World,” and she represents the enduring presence of compassion in spiritual life. She is relaxed, sitting in what is called the posture of Royal Ease. She wears loose-fitting garb. Jewels enhance her neck and wrists, and her hair is pulled up into a knot on her head. Her legs are slightly open; one knee is propped up, and her arm dangles over it, casual and sensual. But her spine is straight, and so is her gaze. She is supremely at home in herself, present to all that is and deeply awake to all that is beyond form. I had given her a large feather to hold in one hand and a beaded medicine bag to wear. I had also placed a small ceramic owl on one of her shoulders because of my love of birds.
I had never made a request to a goddess before, since I only related to them as symbols. But suddenly, looking at her on my dresser, I spontaneously spoke to her: “I am just going to give this evening to you, Kanzeon, because I don’t know how to navigate my conflicting feelings, and I know you are wise in the ways of these things.” I sprang up, inspired to take the two-foot statue outside to the garden. I placed a woven piece of Guatemalan fabric in the middle of a small patio table and set her on top of it. Then I put six or seven glass votive candles in front of her and lit each one. By now my anxiety was gone, and I was in a mood of complete aesthetic enjoyment.
I went back inside to get a bottle of wine and glasses, flowers, and a plate of fresh peaches, cucumbers, and tomatoes for my guest. In the meantime, Randee, the other member of this complicated triangle, called. She knew Jeri was in town and that we were getting together. She wanted to come over. I thought to myself, No way. I can handle one of them, but together, these girls are too much. I paused, and again my mind seemed to fall off a shelf. I couldn’t say yes, and I couldn’t say no. So I said, “All right.”
Soon after, Amy, another friend I hadn’t seen for months, called. It was strange that she contacted me that same evening. A few years before, we had socialized often, but since she had left for medical school, I hadn’t seen her for some time. When she heard the others were on their way, she said she was coming too. A little while later, she was walking up the winding steps to my front door in the mellowing golden light of a Utah summer evening, looking like a living goddess with her dark skin, broad bare shoulders, and sensual hips wrapped in a summer sarong. I welcomed her in.
Soon all four of us were sitting outside in my small, enclosed garden, sipping wine together. Jeri was tenderly fingering the pages of a book of Edward Curtis’s Native American portraits, dove-cooing over their sepia beauty. Randee held a pocket mirror up to her face, smiling as she outlined her sculpted lips in her favorite matte red lipstick. Amy sat happily in summer sandals with painted bronze toenails, and Kanzeon was silent, gracing us with her ineffable presence. All was right with the world. We sat the whole evening together without speaking about the past. It was completely unnecessary in the power of the beautiful present. Thank goodness for the here and now. I simply felt grateful for this brand-new moment and fully compassionate toward everything we had been through. I didn’t say a word; speaking about the past was unnecessary.”
~ Diane Musho Hamilton, in Radical Compassion: Shambhala Publications Authors on the Path of Boundless Love. Diane Musho Hamilton is a Zen teacher, an award-winning mediator, and a facilitator of group dialogues, especially conversations around culture, religion, race, and gender. She is a dharma heir of Dennis Genpo Merzel and a student of Ken Wilber. She and her husband, Michael Mugaku Zimmerman (a former justice of the Utah Supreme Court), are founders and guiding teachers of the Boulder Mountain Zendo in Salt Lake City.
Photos ~ Quan Yin, Diane Musho Hamilton, & with her husband Michael D. Zimmerman
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