The Turn
Five teachings on coming back, once you have seen it, for everyone who has not.
The previous course was the glimpse. This one is about the hardest part of any journey, which is not the going but the return. Campbell said it plainly: the descent has momentum, the trial has momentum, and the coming back has none. The one who has seen something must now choose to walk back into a world that has not seen it, does not want to hear about it, and will not be changed by the report.
The Map files these five teachings under love, and that is not sentimental. Love, in the traditions, is the name for the turn itself: the moment the awakened one, standing at the fork, chooses the road that leads back. A Buddhist vow. A Harvard professor in a mountain temple. A Sikh scripture that put Muslim and Hindu poets on the same page as its own gurus. And Ram Dass, again, saying in American English what the bodhisattva said in Sanskrit. Read these knowing that the word is the most embarrassing one on the site, and the most accurate.
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VII.1The hardest partCampbell says the quest is not finished at the summit. It is finished at home.The Hero’s Return · Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (1988); The Hero with a Thousand Faces
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VII.2The vow at the forkŚāntideva writes the vow of the one who turns back, and the fork is the teaching’s image for it.The Fork in the Road · Śāntideva, Bodhicaryāvatāra ch. III — trans. L. D. Barnett, The Path of Light (1909); Saddharma-Puṇḍarīka (Lotus Sutra) — trans. H. Kern, Sacred Books of the East XXI (1884)
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VII.3Just love everyoneRichard Alpert, credentialed to the top of the Western mind, is looked at once and becomes Ram Dass.Ram Dass and the Turn · Ram Dass, Be Here Now (1971); Becoming Nobody (documentary, 2019)
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VII.4Who is good, who is bad?The Sikh scripture sets a Muslim weaver and a Sufi saint beside its own gurus, and asks the question.From the One Light · Guru Granth Sahib — Ang 1349 (Kabir), Ang 1378 (Sheikh Farid), Ang 1136 (Guru Arjan) — trans. Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
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VII.5Walking each other homeRam Dass says the bodhisattva vow in a sentence you can carry in a pocket.We’re All Just Walking Each Other Home · Ram Dass, various talks and writings
Five readings, and the most embarrassing word on the site has been used a dozen times without apology. That is the point. The traditions are not shy about it. They say that what you do with the seeing is turn around, and that the turning has a name, and the name is love.
One course remains. It is short, and it is about the laugh: the sound the traditions make from the height that sees the whole of it at once. It is the right place to end, because the alternative to the laugh is solemnity, and no one who has actually seen the thing stays solemn for long.