Coming to Nothing and Finding Everything Read online

  COMING TO NOTHING

  AND FINDING EVERYTHING

  COMING TO NOTHING AND FINDING EVERYTHING

  PRISON, HEADLESSNESS, AND THE MAN IN THE OTHER BATHROOM

  By J.C. Amberchele

  COMING TO NOTHING AND FINDING EVERYTHING

  ISBN: 978-1-7926624-6-1

  © J.C. Amberchele 2019

  All rights reserved

  Cover art “Shadow Walking” by Oscar Senn

  A slightly different version of “Patch of Green” first appeared in the magazine New Age Journal in 1985.

  “The Time of Your Life” was published in the Winter 2000 issue of Turning Wheel.

  “Impromptu Awakening” and “No-Mindfulness” appeared in the 1999 Fall and 2001 Spring/Summer issues respectively of Inner Directions Journal.

  Also by J.C. Amberchele:

  The Light That I Am

  The Almighty Mackerel and His Holy Bootstraps

  The Heavenly Backflip

  Cracked Open

  How You Lose (A novel in stories)

  In the beginning . . .

  God meets Himself and discovers He has nothing to do because He is already Everything That Is, for which He is grateful, of course, even though He doesn’t know why or even what this “Everything” is that He is, or why He is awake to this fact and appears to be Here/Now, despite the fact that He sees there is no separate one to be or not be anywhere or anywhen.

  Look within!

  The secret is inside you.”

  —Hui-Neng

  "We have two eyes to see two sides of things, but there must be a third eye which will see everything at the same time and yet not see anything. That is to understand Zen."

  —D.T. Suzuki

  “What you are looking for is where you are looking from.”

  —St. Francis of Assisi

  “What we truly are is God manifest in time and place.

  Know this and live well until you die.”

  —Rabbi Rami Shapiro

  "The fact is that you are not the body.

  The Self does not move but the world moves in it.”

  —Ramana Maharshi

  “Look here and know who you are.

  Instantly you will find freedom, and this

  Suffering—hitchhiking from womb to womb—will

  Instantly stop. The only way is to look within.”

  —Sri H.W.L. Poonja

  “Suddenly and abruptly I recognized myself.”

  —Meng Shan

  “What a universe it is, what incredible richness

  And variety gush tirelessly

  From this unutterably simple I AM THAT I AM.”

  —D.E. Harding

  Table of Contents

  FOREWORD

  INTRODUCTION

  A PATCH OF GREEN

  THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE

  FREEDOM

  LEAF

  PERFECTLY RIDICULOUSLY EASY

  WORDS GALORE

  THE HOLY CIRCLE OF LIGHT

  NO-MINDFULNESS

  LETTER TO A FRIEND

  ON DYING

  WILL THE REAL J.C. PLEASE STAND UP!

  IMPROMPTU AWAKENING

  DON’T MIND ME!

  GRACE

  TO HAVE AND TO HOLD

  PART THREE

  RELEASE

  BARE NAKED AWARENESS

  .STORIES OF ONENESS

  SO WHAT’S NOT TO LOVE?

  TWO-WAY SEEING

  THE FOOL

  PROBLEMS, PROBLEMS

  TRIKE

  THE MAN IN THE OTHER BATHROOM

  WHERE’S THE REMOTE?

  THE TUNNEL OF TRUTH

  INFINITELY SILLY

  VACATION

  TAKING IT TO THE STREETS

  THIS JUST SHOULDN’T HAVE HAPPENED

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  FOREWORD

  I’ve had the pleasure of knowing and walking alongside Amberchele for many years. His life story is dramatic, a descent into the Underworld if ever there was one followed by a breakthrough into the ‘country of everlasting clearness.’ In this book he tells us stories from his journey, including the time he was in a Mexican jail—and how he escaped!—as well as tales from his long incarceration in a U.S. prison. How different his path has been from mine. And yet, in some ways, not so different.

  Amberchele writes with honesty, humility and humour, painting with vivid word-pictures his adventures. But what also enables me to enter deeply into his mind and heart is his direct seeing and valuing of the Self at the core of himself, the one who is ‘the soul of my soul.’ Again and again he brings onto the front burner This which is most clear and most dear to him—This which is visible to anyone who looks. As he describes his view from his Single Eye, I am right there with him, nearer to him than he is to himself. If like Amberchele you are drawn to the One, fascinated by the One, in love with the One, then I think you’ll find in him a friend.

  So often what the Self pulls out of the magic hat of itself is unpredictable, in both small ways and big. A dramatic illustration of this comes when Amberchele’s life takes a new direction. A radically new direction. Suddenly, after 35 years in prison, in his late seventies, in not great health, with little money and only the clothes on his back, he is released . . .

  But, as he says, if you can’t trust This, what can you trust?

  When we turn our attention round from what we are looking at to what we are looking out of, we see that each of us is the One. And importantly, each of us is also a unique life lived by the One, a special expression of the One. This book invites you to feel your way into another of the One’s lives. Take this opportunity to see what it’s like being the One from Amberchele’s point of view. You will be enriched by the experience.

  Richard Lang, December 2018

  INTRODUCTION

  In Buddhism, it is said that when the Buddha became enlightened, all beings were enlightened, for when the Buddha became enlightened, he saw that all beings were inside him, and thus were him.

  This is the overall theme of this book, from the early articles in Part I that were written from within the prison experience, through the period of sudden realization and cumulative understanding in Part II, and on to the joy of universal acceptance in Part III. It is not a book about Buddhism or any other ism. It is more a conversation about Who We Really Are, which ultimately is a conversation with ourSelf.

  A few of the chapters in this book appeared as magazine articles; others were never published. The chapter entitled “Leaf” in Part I is fiction, while the remainder of that section and all of the chapters in Parts II and III are non-fiction. Each, whether written during the first decade of my prison sentence or included more recently, arrived unbidden, either penciled on note paper or typed on a portable or eventually keyed into this old laptop, appearing in and as this mysterious and awake No-thing.

  Special thanks to Richard Lang, coordinator of the Shollond Trust and The Headless Way, for consistently pointing to awakening and showing so many others the same. Also to Douglas and Catherine Harding, who demonstrated that I am not what others say I am, based on what I look like from where they are. I am, rather, exactly what I see for myself when I turn my attention around and look within.

  You are invited to do the same, and to that end, Douglas and friends have invented several simple but powerful “experiments,” many of which can be found in my earlier work The Light That I Am, or in several of Harding’s and Richard Lang’s books. As a result, one look in the right direction may be the world shaking, world-ending event it was for me, or it may not. Suffice it to say that it requires a look, not a read, but should a word
in this book at least point to the “gateless gate” of awakening, then the Beatific

  Vision is surely to follow.

  PART ONE

  PRISON

  “Why do you stay in prison

  when the door is so wide open?”

  ―Rumi

  A PATCH OF GREEN

  I have sixteen years of lower and higher education to my credit, along with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Not a remarkable feat these days, but the education was good: a private Quaker school in Philadelphia, a fine suburban high school in New Jersey where we “preppies” wore white bucks and rode our Raleighs to class, two years at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, and a dean’s list graduation from a university in New York. Splendid preparation for the position I’ve been holding—assistant janitor of Pod C-1 in this far-removed state penitentiary. Pay: $1.12 per week.

  Today, however, I have spiraled to an all-time low. I am now assistant laundryman as well, which is about as far down the unholy ladder as one can get. To carry out this task I remove the trash from a large plastic barrel, foist the barrel into the shower stall, and fill it with hot water (if there is any), cheap soap powder, and the nastiest conglomeration of soiled clothes this side of San Quentin. The wash and rinse cycles are accomplished with the help of a makeshift plunger, the product of an unlikely marriage of plastic soup bowl and broomstick; “spin dry” means wet blisters on the palms of my hands from wringing countless pairs of state socks and underwear. The final result is a dripping gray mass hanging from the metal railings of the second tier like seaweed draped from the gunnels of a rusting ship. There should be a better way to do this here, but no one has invented it yet.

  This is a maximum-security prison. Should the bars come unglued, the public would have something to be concerned about,

  what with more than three hundred terminally bored convicts running amok in an already crime-ridden society full of terrified law-abiding citizens. But life in prison is not the minute-by-minute horror story one is led to believe. There are some pretty nice folks here, at least folks who were probably pretty nice before they arrived.

  There are, of course, a few strange ones—inmates who tread the high-wire of separate realities, faltering with every step. Mustard Bob, bless his heart, puts mustard on his pudding and Jell-O in his taco shells. Mumblin’ Phil has twenty-four-hour nightmares and wards off imaginary monsters by jamming cigarettes up his nose. Maybe he knows why. Then there are the slugs—hopeless inmates in dull green uniforms—those referred to by the guards as “good for nothing.” Too burdened with negative conditioning to step in either direction, they are buffeted about like dust balls on the prison floor, passed down the institutional line, and eventually swept out onto the street where they may or may not make it. And finally, there are the habitually violent, men who rarely emerge from the special cages they are housed in, and then only in chains. Shocking people with shocking crimes, they are the most distressing, as much because they are a danger to society as because they are part of us all, the toxic waste of a culture that cares too often for the wrong things for the wrong reasons.

  Today I am standing by one of the two pod windows made of multiple slabs of what appears to be sledgehammer-resistant glass. The view looks onto a long and empty asphalt mall surrounded by cellblocks and work units, and dominated on the western end by the administration building. The tower, not unlike those used for traffic control at major airports, looms menacingly above the mall, a bastion of security for the staff and a warning to us. The entire complex is constructed of unpainted cement blocks, resembling a munitions bunker in the Nevada desert.

  But in the middle of this anomaly, adjacent to the administration building and in front of my window, there is a tiny patch of perfectly green lawn, punctuated at both ends by flowers—tulips, daffodils, and geraniums. A convict tends it with loving care. The administrators have put their mark on it by bordering it with railroad ties, military style, and clipping its grass rigidly short to match their flattop haircuts. It is as if they placed it here as a final word, a reminder of our obedience to the groomed oppression of their system.

  I am standing here in front of this window in front of this lawn, surrounded by this mess I’ve gotten myself into for the rest of my life—smiling. It is a gesture as close to tears as to laughter. A friend approaches, and I can tell that he is worried that I see something he doesn’t, or worse, that I have joined the ranks of those who won’t make it. If he should ask why I am smiling, I’ll have to tell him the thought that just crossed my mind, but I know he won’t feel the nameless emotion that is out of proportion to the words, or smell the sweet musk of earth and grass, or hear me scream louder than I could with my voice, but I’ll tell him anyway, quietly:

  It’s the lawn. No matter how any times they clip it, it keeps growing back.

  THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE

  Before I came to prison I saw time as linear, racing or dragging but nevertheless advancing reliably into a future of personal advantage, often at the cost of others. But prison changed that. To be sent to prison is to be cut off, removed, sealed in a void. Gone were family and friends, gone the comfortable routine of my job, gone also the weekends in the mountains, gone even my clothes, my watch, my hair. To be in prison is to go nowhere, not in the sense of treading water but of drowning repeatedly, and in this it is relentless: the boredom, the fear, the violence are constant reminders. But above all, to come to prison is to stop abruptly: to a new prisoner the world literally quits, and what remains seems endlessly empty, without dimension.

  When I first arrived, I experienced the most profound sense of absence, a feeling I never could have imagined before. This same knowledge of timelessness, I have heard, is experienced by people who choose suicide: a past too painful to remember, a future that appears hopeless at best, and the unbearable present of life in prison.

  But slowly, perhaps to prevent myself from going insane, I built a life inside these walls. I found a job, friends, time to write. For many prisoners it is easier to pick up where they left off, reestablishing the habits that brought them here in the first place. The tiers are crowded with con men and thieves, gangsters and thugs. But for some, the shock of prison is so great that it propels

  them in a new direction.

  Not long after I arrived I met a man doing “life” on a major drug charge. Despite the time he was facing, he filled his days with good cheer and positive effort. This man—with twenty years to parole eligibility—was a fervent member of AA and of academic and church groups. Although he earned no more than $1.50 a day at his job, he was perhaps more dedicated than the entire hierarchy of staff supervisors above him. One day I asked him why he was so enthusiastic.

  “Why not?” he replied.

  And I believe this is when I began to view time differently. “Why not?” became for me—not suddenly but with the sort of shift in thinking that requires months or years—a source of inner strength, a catchphrase for personal motivation. “Why not?” became “Sure—why not!”

  Not long ago my son and daughter came to visit me. My daughter had done some research on our family tree and brought news that her grandfather, my father, whom I had not seen nor spoken to in nearly 20 years, had died of a heart attack the year following my arrest. Hardly remembering him herself, having met him only once when she was young, she patted my arm and waited for my reaction. When none came, she took my hand and continued talking about her new job and new apartment, eventually passing the conversation over to my son, who had much to say about his high school football team.

  For the rest of the visit I listened, laughed at their stories, and felt their excitement and hope for the future, but it was not easy. I kept thinking about my dad, and about time, doing time, and what it has meant for me. I had missed more than a decade of my children’s lives, nearly their entire teenage years, and would miss countless more. I had missed my father’s funeral without even knowing he had died, and worse, I had missed the opportunity to tell him a
t least once that I loved him.

  But I was also thinking that, if nothing else, prison, with its rigid conformity and structured regularity, has taught me that time is cyclical, not linear. I see time now as a great spiral, corkscrewing out of the past and carrying with it all the complex moments of history, and always coming around, coming around. The world, I have realized, allows for second chances, but only if you create them. And it is not enough to make room for new habits among the old ones; second chances are created from within, in a process that either begins with a change of attitude or begins not at all, a process that requires altering a lifetime of familiar but self-defeating beliefs. Why not?

  Years ago when I was in college, my father unexpectedly appeared at my Homecoming Day football game. I played defense on the team, and during the first period of a game we were already losing, there he was, on the sideline near the end zone in his topcoat and Stetson. I intercepted a pass that day, and our team made a spectacular comeback in the fourth quarter to win, but even more amazing was that my dad had driven 300 miles to attend that game. Afterwards, in the locker room, because we didn’t know what to say to each other, because we never knew what to say, I told him I had a date, and he left for home, 300 miles in an empty car.