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Isidasi - Attended by the Wise
Poem by Isidasi - an early Chinese Chan Buddhist nun...
Isidasi and Bodhi were sitting together
after their morning meal
in a shady corner of the Pataliputta Forest.
Bodhi said to Isidasi,
How did it happen, my sister—
that you came to leave home?
And so Isidasi told Bodhi her story:
My father gave me everything I asked for.
When I came of age, he gave me to a wealthy merchant.
I cared for my husband
as a mother would care for
her only son.
And like a spoiled child,
he constantly complained
and humiliated me in front of others.
When his parents asked him why,
my husband only said,
She is in every way the perfect wife.
Still, I can no longer live in the same house
as Isidasi.
They took me back to my father's house—
and left me there.
Soon my father gave me to another rich merchant,
but with only half the dowry.
I lived in Number Two's house
and served him as a slave would serve her master.
And in turn he treated me
as a master would treat a slave.
After a month or so, he too sent me back.
One morning a wanderer came to our door.
He and my father got to talking,
and my father said to him,
Good man, put aside your robes and bowl.
Stay here with us—
and take my daughter as your wife.
The wanderer and I lived together
as husband and wife
for two whole weeks.
Then one morning he said to my father,
Good sir, give me back my robes and bowl.
Once again I will take to the open road.
Your daughter is, in all ways, the ideal companion.
Still, I can no longer live in the same house as Isidasi.
That night I couldn't sleep.
Something inside was pulling and twisting.
In the morning I gave myself to the Path—
and the Path took me away.
I remember those first weeks and months.
At night I was often cold.
During the day I was often hungry.
And I was lonely all the time.
While meditating late one night,
I saw far, far back—
back to before I was ever Isidasi—
back to when I was the daughter of a poor man
who was always in debt.
I saw the afternoon when a rich merchant
came to collect on a debt—
and my father gave him me instead.
When I came of age,
the merchant's son took me for his own.
And even though I served him as best I knew how,
after a couple of weeks, he started to complain.
And somehow I wasn't surprised by what came next.
Listen, my heart.
When they send you away,
make sure you wave goodbye
with both hands.
One river flows towards you.
Another away.
In the end,
you will be the one
to carry yourself
home.
*Matty Weingast. Trans. The First Free Women: Original Poems Inspired by the Early Buddhist Nuns.
*
Isidasi could not find a home, not one with a roof and walls. The river flowed to her; the river flowed away. Change. Change. Change. You receive, you lose.
We humans seek a homeplace amid the change. Yet, not all that appears to be good homes are homes at all. We humans seek sanctuary and consolation in many homes: relationships, sports, money, career, family, religion, being a good citizen, fighting for justice, ... The best of them cannot fulfill what we most deeply long for - the Home calling us home.
Hence, humans often move from one home to another, unable to settle, like from relationship to relationship, job to job, drug to drug, traveling to here and to there, this hobby to that hobby, ... Without settling, there is seeking, seeking, and seeking. Each stop gives temporary satisfaction, but it wanes over time. Each stop is not an end, only a temporary pause from our incessant quest for heaven on earth. And the fleeting satisfaction when stopping is a taste of what home feels like. Yet, what is not home cannot sustain the satisfaction home offers, and we intuit but seem unable to find.
*
Another early Chinese Buddhist nun, in a death poem, speaks of Home without a roof and walls -
On this frosty day, clouds and mist congeal,
On the mountain moon, the icy chill glows.
At night I receive a letter from my home,
At dawn I leave without anyone knowing.
*Beata Grant, Trans. Daughters of Emptiness: Poems of Chinese Buddhist Nuns.
"A letter from my home" is Home, not the house where the poet lived secluded in the mountains. "At dawn I leave without anyone knowing." She is prepared to depart her temporary home and body. She could welcome the departure, for she had come to realize the temporality of any place we settle the body here in this material realm. Of course, she may not be going anywhere else, in the sense of space - up, down ... - as far as we know, every realm for beings is nowhere: all locations being shadows, mirages, part of God's magic show.
Maiozhan, another early sister Chan nun -
I too now realize that phenomena
are nothing but a magic show
And happily grow old among the
mist, the rivers, and the stones.
*Ibid.
The magic show does not mean there is no mist, no rivers or stones, no you, and no house with a roof and walls. Phenomena witness to Reality the way your shadow witnesses of your presence. Yet, what if persons mistake your shadow for you? Well, what if persons cling to the magic show and miss recognizing the Magician? True Nature cannot find its Home among phenomena, for it bears the Magician's nature. Something is never home.
So, Jesus, in the Gospels, says, "Set your affections on what is above, not what is here on earth where moth and rust corrupt and thieves break in and steal." What is here is here to be loved by being loved through. By being intimate with something, we can awaken to intimacy with Truth. Still, persons can surrender themselves to stuff and miss awakening to spirit. What is here is meant to dissatisfy us, so we turn toward what is "above": again, this does not need to be interpreted locally.
And Jesus, again in the Christian Scriptures -
Then he said to the disciples, “The days are coming when you will wish to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. Then people will say to you, ‘Look, there he is!’ or ‘Look, here he is!’ Do not go out or run after them. For just like the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from side to side, so will the Son of Man be in his day. But first he must suffer many things. and people living now reject him.
Spirit is not, see, in one place or any space. Lighting permeates the sky. Spirit interpenetrates all things. Phenomena are the Face of God. The Son of Man comes when you we this? Otherwise, we only see things to be things, rather than sacraments, or icons, of Grace.
So, "above" is right there where you are, now. People search for it the world over: religions, spiritualities, retreats, spiritual teachers, gurus, holy books, rituals, rites, holy sites, ... Spirit is hiding in plain daylight.
The magic show can put you to sleep and wake you up. Look through the roof and walls, and Spirit appears as Spirit, not merely the roof and walls. On the Path, we get glimpses of this, openings that soon close, and this encourages us onward. In time, we unite with it, and it is no longer the 'special' thing it once was; it is as ordinary as a blade of grass or dishwater.
*
As for physical homes, I have moved about 50 times since leaving my family home at age 19 to go to college. Finally, at age 65, I decided to settle down in a tiny home. The river has flowed toward me, thankfully, but it will, someday, flow away, as it has flowed to me and away many times.
Any walls and roof here are temporary. The Christian Scripture speaks of Abraham -
And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith—for he was like a foreigner, living in tents. And so did Isaac and Jacob [his sons], who inherited the same promise. Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God (NLT).
So, while Abraham receives a land in the story, he still looks for a city not within time-and-space (eternal). He is a tenting foreigner. We are all bedouins.
There is that in Abraham, that while given a land, not fully at home there, and could not be. On the physical plane, the Hebrew ancestor could not find home, even though he found a place to live.
*
Hence, in some sense, as intimacy with Spirit deepens, so does a sense of aloneness. An an eminent Sufi witnesses to this -
The past has flown away,
The coming month and year do not exist;
Ours only is the present's tiny point.
Time is but a fancied [imagined] dot ever moving on
Which you have called a flowing river-stream.
I am alone in a wide desert,
Listening to the echo of strange noises.
*Sa'd Ud Din Mahmud Shabistari. The Secret Rose Garden of Sa'd Ud Din Mahmud Shabistari.
This resonates with a Gospel saying about Jesus. The reading: "He had nowhere to lay his head." He had no home in what we call home. So, the Gospel of John reads, "He tented among us," like a desert-dwelling bedouin, no permanency, one on the move. The Timeless moving in time, the Nonlocal moving among locales.
* * *
And from the Christian Scripture -
For we know when this earthly tent [the body] we live in is taken down [dies], we will have a house in the skies, an eternal body [not everlasting, but eternal, which means not within linear time] made for us by Spirit itself and not by human hands.
True Nature never finds its home anywhere on the material plane, and the body and the promised land represent the realm of matter. "Heaven," or "the skies," points to a non-material realm, here and now, yet outside here and now. The material realm is sacramental, in that matter participates in Spirit. Spirit and matter are not separate, yet not the same. The Path leads us - sometimes pulls us - into a paradox: home is here, now; the heart longs for home.
*
Isidasi speaks of a home, too, without walls and roof. No matter how good a wife she is, she is returned to her parents.
Why did her husbands applaud her excellence as a wife, yet return her? Each, including one from a previous life, finds they cannot live in the same house with her. They do not know why. No matter how good a wife to them, there is a sense of two persons living in different spaces.
Well, they were living in different spaces. We can live under a roof with someone and never live in the same space. And we can live far away from someone and live in the same house.
Isidasi could adopt the Path, for she was destined for something more than living in a house with walls and a roof. Home was near, even before she set out on the Path. She could not share that with her husbands any more than you can share it when you and someone else live in a different consciousness space. If you are embodying transpersonal presence, how can someone living with perpersonal or personal presence not sense that and not be uncomfortable with the dissonance? And most humans live with personal consciousness, and many have not developed to that point.
A friend and I discussed this dilemma recently. The more you develop, the fewer people that share the same space with you. This can be painful. It is a shadow of spiritual evolution. You may feel yourself somehow distant even from those who were previously close to you, or feel estranged and misunderstood by family or religion. You may find persons you once enjoyed being around, you no longer do. You may discover the entertainments and discussion topics are no longer of interest.
When you find home, you may no longer feel at home in your religion, political party, significant relationship, ... And some might wonder, asking, "What happened to her? I don't know who she is anymore." Well, they do not know who you are anymore, for you are not who you were anymore.
*
I provide a example from my experience. I was working in hospice. The hospice was located in a conservative Christian region of the United States. Something came up in a discussion about gays. I interjected something like the following, "I had a lesbian pastor, and that was okay with me. I liked her." A staff member, a conservative, anti-gay Christian was surprised, and she said she did not know how that was possible. I said, "You and I live on different planets." That ended the conversation.
We do not all live on the same planet - meaning, we do not all embody the same degree of Sacredness, and with it, Qualities like love, compassion, patience, insight, ... This is evident in politics. Far-right wing voters simply do not demonstrate the same degree of insight and compassion, or intelligence, as other voters.
In the United States, as elsewhere, we live on the same land, but we live in different houses. How do you talk love with someone who cannot grasp that fair treatment of everyone is what it means to love? That godliness is not about shooting people on the streets simply for protesting oppression or trying to assist persons who are under attack, bombing innocent children, supporting genocide, backing fascism, okaying a government protecting rich children rapists, or shipping off people into prison camps simply because of the color of their skin and their racial heritage? It is like an Einstein trying to talk science with a child in kindergarten, or a Pascal trying to talk mathematics with someone who cannot do basic arithmetic.
*
Isidasi found out her husbands always found her intolerable, but they did not know why. They just could not live in the same house, for they did not live in the same home. When you grow spiritually, moving beyond consensual consciousness, many persons will find you intolerable - not merely for what you believe, but for what you have become and manifest to them. In your presence, they feel the contrast.
And, as the Christian Scripture says, "They do not come to the Light." And based on one reading of another scripture, "They cannot comprehend the Light." It can read, "They cannot overcome the Light." Therefore, they distance themselves from what the mind cannot grasp, or they cannot control; not to grasp means, for them, loss of illusory control - and they make seemingly logical excuses for running from or pushing away.
Jesus' crucifixion is a story of just this, as well as many examples in religion and outside it of persons who manifested the Light being executed - the Church has executed some of its own for seeing outside the doctrine established by the Church. Interestingly, Jesus, whom the Church claims to follow, is said to have spoken, "Love one another," not, "Kill those who disagree with you."
I, a former Christian and pastor, certainly found out what can happen to a pastor when challenging a congregation by life or word that there is more than they have come to believe, way more. Many church members were intolerant of my stances and beliefs, for I had grown beyond the dogma they clung to for dear life. I, due to these changes within me, am no longer a part of the Church, but that does not mean I am divorced from the wisdom long forgotten by much - possibly, most - of Christianity. I tried for years to remain in the Church, and went in and out, until out.
Love has led me otherwise than where the Church led me. And Jesus said in the Gospels, "One who takes the plow to plow and looks back is not fit for the kingdom of heaven." Once you see, how can you unsee?
*
Isidasi, after being sent home repeatedly, says "Yes." She says the Path took her away from her former life -
In the morning I gave myself to the Path -
and the Path took me away.
Then, she went through a time of difficulty, alone. This is common when one adopts a sacred way differing from those one lives among. However, key is the Path has a certain energy, a momentum. Once you step on it, you feel carried along.
So -
When they send you away,
make sure you wave goodbye
with both hands.
Just go. She says, across the centuries, "Go. Go gladly. You are being lead away, and to." How can the "to" happen, unless you let go and go? For something, which you long for, to come into your life, it means something going out of your life.
Remember -
One river flows towards you.
Another away.
And -
In the end,
you will be the one
to carry yourself
home.
You carry yourself home, though home is already here, already now. And you are not alone; like Isidasi, you step into the Flow that has been flowing long, long before you. Indeed, you step into the Path that has been walked for millennia, with walkers from widely different times, cultures, religions, and with no religion. And no one can do this for you, even as no one could do it for Isidasi...
So, she says -
Listen, my heart.
She wants her sisters to do the same - listen... not head, "heart."
*
I have come to accept... home is right where I am, now, always. Yet, by being intimate with home here, now, I know home is not merely a place; it is an experience of Sacredness that keeps deepening, as long as I keep saying, "Yes" in reply to Grace.
I could never have dreamed, when I stepped onto the Path, where the Path would have led me inside myself, for all substantial transformation is one of consciousness, of connection with Subtle Spirit - and I accept it is always just the beginning of being home and going home. I, yes, accept that some persons have pulled away from me or pushed me away, not because they were bad or evil, but simply because we could not share the same house.
Now, finally, I can say goodbye, as Isidasie says, waving both hands, not blaming as I once did, not angry toward them, as I once was. And, true, I cannot unsee what I have seen, by Grace. To do so would be to betray truth and Truth, and myself.
*
(C) brian k. wilcox, 2026
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