The Antibody Network ·The Clearing
Reading 5 of 5 The Turn

Walking each other home

Ram Dass says the bodhisattva vow in a sentence you can carry in a pocket.

The reading — Ram Dass, various talks and writings

We’re All Just Walking Each Other Home

The most important thing you can do for another being is to help them remember who they are. Not fix them, not save them, not even heal them — but be with them in such a way that they are reminded of their own wholeness.

When you see me, you remind me of who I am. When I see you, I remind you of who you are. We are mirrors for each other.

I look back on my life and I see that every being I have ever encountered was my teacher. The terrible ones, the beautiful ones, the ones who hurt me, the ones I hurt. Every one of them showed me something I needed to see.

We are all just walking each other home. And home is not a destination. It is a recognition.

Perennial c. 1970 CE Open this teaching on the Map →
The framing

We are all just walking each other home. And home is not a destination. It is a recognition.

This is the last reading of the course, and it is the vow from the second reading translated into plain speech. Śāntideva asked to be used like the earth. Ram Dass says: the most important thing you can do for another being is to help them remember who they are. Not fix them. Not save them. Not even heal them. Be with them in such a way that they are reminded.

Notice the mirror image, because it is doing real work: when you see me, you remind me of who I am. When I see you, I remind you of who you are. The turn is not a rescue mission. It is not the awakened one coming back to help the unawakened. It is two people, each half-forgetting, each reminding the other. Read the passage and then look at the last two sentences again. Home is not somewhere you are going. It is something you recognize, and you mostly recognize it in someone else’s face.

Carry with you
Who reminded you of who you are today, and did you do the same for anyone?
And so

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.

If you'd like, next
Course VIII. The Laugh
And then, if you are lucky, the laugh.
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