100 BUDDHADHARMA: THE PRACTITIONER'S QUARTERLY
sea we cross in this life. We contain both, the timeless depths and
the waves washing over the fragile raft that carries us from birth to
death.
The woman in the story, whose name is Mujaku, went on to
accomplish great things, helping other women meet their own hearts.
Generations of nuns wrote poems about her; one said that the water
from her bucket filled many puddles. She was able to do this not
because she found a way around her grief but because she went quiet
inside and listened for what grief was asking of her. Her cry for help,
the cry of the deer, moonlight pouring from a broken bucket—her
grief spread further than the edges of her skin, belonged to more
than her particular heart. And so did her awakening. As she was
held, so could she hold. That is what awakening is.GRIEF IS A FORM OF LOVE, how we go on loving in the absence
of the beloved. It is the transformation of love through loss, and how
we are initiated into a new world. Like all initiations, it begins with
a purification. In the case of grief this can be particularly intense,
because the loss of what we love is so intense: shock, memory,
sorrow, rage, regret, tenderness, depression, gratitude, guilt, fear,
numbness, longing, disappointment, betrayal, relief. We are scoured
by gales, the old life stripped away. The grief of our time is a strange
one, because in some part we’re mourning what will disappear in the
future. The loss won’t be sudden and unexpected, like a plane crash.
We have predicted it, it will go on for a very long time, and, even as
we mourn, we’ll try to salvage as much as we can.
Eventually we might find our way into the eye of the storm, as
Mujaku did. There’s a difference, though. In Mujaku’s time it was
possible to love the natural world innocently; her awakening is
entwined, in an ancient and uncomplicated way, with deer, stream,
and moon through the trees. She could take something for granted
we can’t anymore, that the natural world will, eternally and self-suf-
ficiently, be here to heal and open us. We can no longer love theStar Showers from the series White Nights, 2013