I read about a performance given by Itzhak Perlman, the great violinist who is paraplegic. At a Carnegie Hall concert, he struggled to the stage with braces on his legs and used canes. After carefully sitting down, putting the canes aside, and taking off his braces, he signaled to the conductor to begin the violin concerto. This was a familiar scene to music lovers who had attended his other concerts. Then something different happened. At the very first violin note, one of the four strings on his faithful violin broke. The audience gasped. They assumed that the violinist would leave the stage as he had come—no one could play with only three strings. However, what then followed made this particular concert more memorable than others. After a brief pause, Perlman signaled the conductor to begin again and played exquisitely with the three remaining strings. At the final note there was an explosion of bravos and applause, after which Perlman finally signaled the audience to stop. Then he said these memorable words, "You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left." The person writing about this conveyed awe at the magnificence of the human spirit so vividly demonstrated.
The dramatic event that tested the skill and courage of this acclaimed performer happens all the time in less spectacular ways in everyday life. Loss is at the heart of life. The Buddha taught that one of the main characteristics of existence is impermanence, anicca. In the First Noble Truth he pointed out that change itself is not the problem. Change is simply the way things are. As we train, it becomes clear that it is our clinging or attachment to moving phenomena that creates problems for us. This is the Second Noble Truth and most of us need to penetrate it repeatedly. So the second characteristic of existence that the Buddha emphasized is dukkha, the inherent unsatisfactoriness of life as it is ordinarily lived. The third characteristic he enumerated is less obvious, though it is gradually revealed with continued spiritual practice: since everything shifts and changes there can be no permanent, independent and separate ‘me,’ anatta. I think Perlman demonstrated these important aspects of existence and showed how to go beyond them. Our Right Understanding allows us to live a Buddhist life of spiritual practice that is equally magnificent to Perlman’s performance, even though it may not be appreciated as such. As Dogen wrote, "To live by Zen is the same as to live an ordinary daily life."
One of the great Zen masters of the last century pointed out that the Buddha-to-be walked the way of loss, renouncing palatial life with all its pleasures and security. The disturbing prod for him came when he was faced squarely with the truth of impermanence by being exposed to four sights: an old person, a sick person, a corpse, and a mendicant wanderer walking by without agitation or distress. These are referred to as Divine Messengers because they gave him the impetus to move beyond. His mission was to find the spiritual solution to the end of suffering. This was his koan. He could see that although he was young, healthy and alive, he too was destined to experience old age, ill health, and death. To live the way of loss does not require the kind of literal renunciation shown by the Buddha. What he found through this momentous choice was that there is a Noble Path that leads away from our holding onto that which changes, thus releasing us from the inevitable suffering otherwise attendant upon living within changeableness.
To paraphrase Perlman’s observation after his magnificent performance: Sometimes life asks each of us to see how much music we can make with what we have left. All of us have experienced loss. All of us have survived experiences of grief, fear, and grave difficulty—situations when we are forced to confront big change. Our Buddhist practice allows us to work with the less dramatic incidents of daily life that challenge our equanimity. As one influential teacher of the last century put it, "The Buddha taught us how to die before we die. Then we can live at peace." This ‘dying’ is the repeated letting go of the ‘me’ that wants and demands things to be a certain way and not another. St. Francis wrote at the end of his famous prayer, "It is in dying [to self] that we are born into Eternal life." Our wonderful ongoing practice is to keep refining our awareness about what we are holding onto, what we are resisting when life brings us varied experiences that challenge us to let go. The process becomes increasingly subtle. As it is said, there is no resting place where we can simply be complacent, resting upon our laurels. None of us ever really knows what will happen next. This sobering truth can help us return to the present moment. Over and over again with respect and courage, we can make wholesome choices, deepen our faith and true knowing that there is more than this passing moment. Just as Perlman learned when he was confronted with the loss of a string on his violin that he could make music with what he had left, we can also learn how to rise to the true glory of our life when we are faced with the awe-filled challenges that come.
We can learn from each moment by our willingness to train. Each moment is our teacher. We can bring to bear the fullness of this path of Buddhist training. That choice is always open to us. Then the question how can I know? is answered through the doing. We can bow in acceptance to the way things are and from this secure place over and over again ask What is it good to do now? This silent music of our spiritual practice ripples through the great universe in which we are all interrelated. In a quiet, unostentatious way we can applaud our daily mundane choices to keep up our training. We are beautifully aware that when a seeming loss appears, we too have the capacity to find out how much music we can make with what is left.