Justin Stone Speaks (November 2018)

From Climb the Joyous Mountain, excerpted and reprinted with permission from Good Karma Publishing.

PULL QUOTE: secure in faith, one can wait patiently and the inevitable will arrive

The Grand Plan and the I Ching

Events continually happen to me as though some grand plan is being carried out. No matter how I try, I cannot seem to go against the shape of this plan. If one can flow easily with the current, all goes well. But it will, seemingly, reach the predetermined end, no matter what.

When I depart somewhere with nothing certain about the future, I know the coming events are already formed but not yet visible, just as a future sculpture lies within an untouched marble cube. Secure in faith, one can wait patiently and the inevitable will arrive. Several examples follow.

I didn’t go to Japan from San Francisco as planned, but I instead found myself in New Mexico. I decided to take an apartment and build a future in Santa Fe, but after two visits, I did not find a place to stay. Resting at a friend’s house in Taos, I awoke one rainy Monday morning with the feeling that I should be in Albuquerque, a place that had never evinced the slightest interest. I was so anxious to get there (for no apparent reason) that I did not wait to collect my laundry, but asked my host to pick it up and forward it to me. I took off on a 130-mile drive in the rain to a larger city.

Arriving in Albuquerque, I did not even know which freeway exit to take. I emerged on a main street and parked in front of a bookstore. Inside, I asked some unimportant questions. The man behind the counter idly inquired what sort of work I did, and I gave the first answer that came into my head: “I guess I teach T’ai Chi Ch’uan.”

Immediately two students jumped up from behind the books and said, “We’ve been waiting along time for a T’ai Chi teacher to arrive.”

I protested that I was not in Albuquerque to stay, had no place to live, no studio in which to teach. All the answers were forthcoming, however. Within a few days, six weekly classes had been organized at a nearby yoga academy. From this “accidental” beginning, I began three years of teaching about the Far East at the two universities, teaching the English language to young business men from Japan, and even designing a series of Zen cards and note paper. Writing books and other things followed (as though prearranged – all, seemingly, because of an urge to go to a strange city and a careless answer to a question.)

A Prayer Before Meals for Buddhists and Others

May I be properly grateful for this food,

which is the result of the work of others

and the suffering of other forms of life.

May I always be grateful to the Buddha,

Who was born at Kapilavastu,

Enlightened at Magadha,

Preached at Varanasi,

And died at Kushinagara.

I now open the Tathagata’s* eating bowl for my meal.

May I and all others

Be delivered from self-clinging.

May we be led from the unreal to the real,

From darkness into light,

Bringing an end to the suffering of all beings.

*Tathagata is another name for the Buddha, meaning “the One who thus comes.”