January 14, 2025

 “The Visit from an Old Teacher”

I didn’t want to go anywhere this morning when I was meditating but got called somewhere nonetheless. This turned out to be a connection to my lifetime before I was the one I call Lucas. In that lifetime, my parents died when I was a young child and my brother joined the army, sending me into the care of a monastery. It was rather bitter lifetime and I don’t have many happy memories from it. In the end, I’m pretty sure I died of some sort of disease, probably when I was in my early forties. My dead body was cut into pieces and fed to vultures. A sky burial. This last bit is important for today’s experience.

I ‘awoke’ in a dead place, kind of like a Chinese Buddhist temple or an Asian Buddhist temple at least. Nothing fancy. I was sitting in a long, covered walkway. The courtyard was open and the outside was suffused with bluish light. This color I have come to associate with the souls of the dead. The temple radiated a sickly green light. I looked at my hands and my skin was translucent, glowing faintly green. I wore jade wristbands.

I didn’t want to be there but was called forward by a voice that I recognized. I walked to the edge of the temple and looked into the bluish haze. Everything was dry and brittle and lifeless. However, as I stayed with the experience and followed the voice, I found myself in a cave of blue stone. There was water at my feet, pure, clean water. I sat down in it, glorying in the wetness after being in such a dry place. There were colorful stones in the water and I reached down and picked up a handful to examine them.

The voice called me onward. I stood up and followed it further into the cave where the blue stone gave way to complete blackness. I know the Absolute when I encounter it and entered it willingly. After everything faded to complete blackness then, only slowly fading away. When I looked up, there was the black outline of a vulture perched on a ledge above.

“Don’t you recognize me?” the voice asked.

“I do.” Although I didn’t quite understand yet. The sight of the vulture triggered a memory, though. I remember my death, being consumed by vultures. For this reason, sky burials have always creeped me out. I remember the birds pulling the flesh off my bones.

I stayed with the experience, tracing it back through my memories. I remembered more of my previous life, remembered my parents, my brothers, the other monks. And then I remembered him. My teacher. He was the old monk who taught me for the first few years after I came to the monastery. He was already quite old at the time, though, and didn’t live very long. He did make an impression on me, though. I remembered that he was very kind or loving and was quite strict. He wasn’t a bad person, though. I can’t say I have a lot of fond memories of him but I don’t think that was his goal with me.

The vulture flapped down and settled at my feet, transforming into my teacher. He was as I remembered him, small and wizened and stooped over. “Do you understand now?” he asked.

I thought before replying, “Yes, I do.”

“I wasn’t teaching you for that lifetime,” he explained. “I was teaching your soul, not your body. I knew your soul was on a journey and I sought to instill the virtues you would need for the journey. This is why I wasn’t kind. But I did my best and I see in looking at you now that I was right in my approach.”

I cried at these words because I could feel the truth in them. I hated him at the time, wasn’t sad when he died. But now I see he didn’t care whether I liked him or not. He was a teacher and he taught me.

“Sit still and remember my lessons,” he said. I sat and he placed his hands on my shoulders from behind. “Just sit and be still. Just like I taught you.”

I sat. His hands on my shoulders helped me to stay quiet and still. I found myself back in the Absolute, this time following a purple thread. The thread led to the starlit garden of the blue-skinned god. I have been in this garden before, met with him a few times. It’s been a while, though, since I’d last seen him. He cradled my head in his hands, so gentle, so fond. I closed my eyes and stayed with the blackness.

“Sit. Just sit.”

I sat. I was no longer in the garden. I don’t know where I was exactly but I felt the presence of people who I really loved in that lifetime. My brother. My parents. The other monks. (Well, I’m not sure how much I really loved them. I never really came to love being in a monastery.)

“Sit. Just sit.”

I remembered the story of Buddha under the Bodhi Tree, how he was tempted but didn’t give in. This, however, didn’t feel like a temptation of any kind. I felt more like an explanation, like showing me that everything that happened in that life had meaning, even when I didn’t see it. And that there had been people who sincerely cared about me and loved me. I could feel their care and their love and it touched me very deeply.

There was no grand finale, no final teaching. My old teacher kept his hands on my shoulders the whole time. It was a gesture of love as well as one of helping to remind me to stay with my experience, to stay with the meditation and not to get distracted.

I didn’t call for him but he came to me anyway and I am glad he did. It was good for me to relearn or maybe learn for the first time that the experiences of that lifetime maybe weren’t quite what I thought they were. Perspective…and death with do that for you, I guess.

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