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TEACHINGS | EASTERN HORIZON 17

Having engaged in practices associated with
Aging Is
the arhat path, and with practices associated
with the bodhisattva path, I look upon both
with great gratitude. For me, both have been
paths of liberation and compassion. The rhetoric
Reality
of the arhat ideal may emphasize liberation

while the rhetoric of the bodhisattva ideal
By Lewis Richmond
may emphasize compassion, but in the heart,
liberation and compassion cannot be separated.
The cultivation of liberation and compassion go
together like the front and back of an open hand.
Clinging, attachment and mental bondage are
like clenching the hand into a fist. When the fist
is opened, liberation and compassion are both
there. Now that I have been practicing Buddhism
for over 35 years, I am less and less inclined
to use the categories of arhat, bodhisattva, or
even buddha. I don’t see much need for them.
My Buddhist practice is now guided by my
Lewis Richmond, an ordained disciple of Shunryu
heart’s capacity for liberation and compassion.
Suzuki Roshi, was for many years Religious
Increasingly, I look at the world through eyes
Director of Green Gulch Zen Temple. He is
informed by these two qualities.
presently the founder and president of a software
company, and is preparing a book of essays on
Everything I have learned about Buddhism
Buddhist themes. He is the author of four books:
teaches me to loosen my attachment to all things.
This includes concepts such as bodhisattva and the national bestseller Work as a Spiritual
arhat, the Mahayana and the Theravada. I have Practice; the award-winning Healing Lazarus (a
found these concepts useful when they help free memoir of his experience with and recovery from
me from clinging or help me help others. I find a rare neurological disease); and most recently,
them harmful when they are what I cling to. And the highly praised A Whole Life’s Work, a sequel
when I am not attached, I find I am happy to let and companion to his first book, and the award-
these concepts go. I have no need to see myself, winning Aging as a Spiritual Practice. This article
or others, through these categories. Instead,
published with the kind permission of the author.
with this non-attachment comes my wish that all
beings may be free of suffering.

Although I studied Buddhism as a young man, it wasn’t
This article was originally published in the Fall
until I reached the later years of my life that I truly
2011 issue of Inquiring Mind, (The “Bodhisattva”
understood the Buddha’s first encounters with old age,
issue). Inquiring Mind was a Buddhist journal
sickness, and death.
that was in print from 1984–2015, and has a
growing number of articles from its back issues
It’s an inescapable truth that we all grow old and die.
available at www.inquiringmind.com. EH
I’m in my seventies now. (If you decided to click and
read this article, you may also be well along in your
Source: Tricycle, Sept 19, 2018. www.tricycle.
years.) Even though I started studying Buddhism as
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a very young man, the profundity and depth of the