Many say that there’s no such thing as mere coincidence and that guidance is always showing us the way with “symphonic serendipity,” if we but learn how to notice.

By Aindriú Peers

Is there room for destiny or vocation in Buddhism?

Is such a thing as a calling or path, one that is subtly marked out for a particular person for a particular purpose? I’ve recently cast an eye back over what looks like now a paper-trail of hints, inner footprints in the mind.

Many say that there’s no such thing as mere coincidence and that guidance is always showing us the way with “symphonic serendipity,” if we but learn how to notice. Joseph Campbell concurs, writing, “Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls. If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.”

But some of us might be slower to catch on. I certainly couldn’t see the path when I jumped on a jet to Tel Aviv, back in the late 80’s. Not being able to read the signposts on emerging from Ben Gurion airport four hours later didn’t stop me from getting on a bus like I knew what I was doing. Knocking persistently on a Franciscan door in Tiberias at 10 p.m., I found refuge but made the mistake of drinking the tap water.

A couple of days later a Canadian couple kidnapped me and took me knee-deep into the Sea of Galilee one afternoon, where I was to preside in priestly fashion over the renewal of their marriage vows. An otter fled the scene. Then off with them again to a place called Cana where water was reportedly turned into wine.

Nobody seemed home.

Our knocking finally woke a friar, who thrust the upstairs window shutter open with a bang that made us all jump and stared out bleary-eyed after his siesta. “Coming!” he growled, then saw me and my beard standing there. “Oh, a bishop!” and he hurried down to open up.

At the time, I was a pious and guilty lad.

I attended Church and at Pentecost received a cardboard cut-out of a dove like everyone else. The girl who gave it to me said I was getting a “special one” and indeed I kept it for a long time, because it felt special.

As a member of a prayer group devoted to Divine Innocence and led by a mystic, it was possible to ask questions of the Mother of God through her, and sometimes a reply came back. I’ll give it a shot, I thought. After all, the next year I was to enter the Trappists. A note came back saying I was a “priest to God’s people” and gave other tips. I wondered if the messages had got mixed up.

These little hints were far from my mind while in the Trappists. They did eventually put me forward as a candidate for the priesthood, but I failed the sermon test, which admittedly I didn’t take very seriously.

Preaching is one thing—writing out a sermon that is then read out verbatim seemed to me something else. So that was that. The note from a mystic years before was wrong after all (ha). I can relax. But the day after leaving the Trappists years later, while waiting for my mini-pizza, a  street vendor in Amsterdam asked me, “Are you a priest?” I couldn’t find any reply in my mouth, although it was wide open.

Actually, six months before exiting the Trappists, a step I didn’t know I was going to take then, I experienced a very vivid “terma-like” vision one night.

A tall dark-robed white-haired priest featured in it. In a dove-shaped chapel I was shown the name of The Order of the Longing Look, in a book—a book showing a path between traditional Christianity and Tibetan Buddhism. The rest of the night I was wide awake and buzzing with energy. Colmcille had stood over me, a tall Sidhe like figure and looked deeply into my eyes for a long time.

As it turned out, I was ordained as a priest after all, and rather quickly—a Celtic Buddhist priest in fact.

It happened at the Anadaire Celtic Buddhist centre in Vermont in 2011 on August 15th, coincidentally the anniversary of my Trappist profession. I even received episcopal status, a fact that may prove important for its tantric significance. Chogyam Trungpa’s boots were danced on my head by Yeshe Perks, founder of this American branch of Celtic Buddhism.

I was still technically on a sabbatical year away from my monastery to discern my vocation. News of the ordination however had been swiftly posted on the sangha website by someone and I soon received an angry letter in the mail from my abbot demanding I immediately make a statement in writing to the effect that I no longer considered myself a member of the Order, or I would not be allowed to come back for my books!

Chogyam Trungpa’s affection for the story of Colmcille had been awoken when he visited Iona in his later years with Yeshe Perks. After leaving the Order I had been invited to Anadaire and Yeshe had guided me through a 100,000 mantra Guru Rinpoche practice during a three month stay.

One evening at supper, between the main course and a pudding, he started rocking backwards and forwards in his chair at the dinner table. He started to suck his front teeth exaggeratedly and smack his lips, tutting intermittently. “I can help you,” he said, mysteriously. “Yes, I can help you …it will be good. You are Colmcille tulku.”

I had no idea what he was talking about at the time and was more focused on pudding. Only later did he begin to explain a little more, once showing me a large silver ring set with a stone from Iona. He promised to give it to me one day.

My training was over and I returned to Ireland.

Failing to start a meditation group, I was unexpectedly invited back to the Netherlands and successfully began a weekly meditation group in a small town. Fast forward on a couple of years and I was spending the winter alone in a rented labourer’s cottage in the Scottish borders, translating my book, first written in Dutch, back into English.

The last evening before leaving Scotland, I went for a walk to bid farewell to the oaks and wildlife in the lovely countryside on the way to Fogo. On the way back, I momentarily morphed into Colmcille himself, experiencing a wonderful moment of intimacy and harmony with nature. I felt I had actually become him. Stopping on the road, I turned and looked up and for a few seconds and saw a silver-lined cloud shaped into the form of a dove.

There were to be other of these surreptitious little symphonic serendipities.

On Iona, I was moved to tears while sitting in the side chapel and listening to the swallows chatter as they flew in and out making their mud nests. This little chapel is where Colmcille’s remains first rested. The potent energy there simply knocked the back door of my heart out, and I tumbled tearfully through the gap, unable to move.

Getting lost near Cnoc Druideann on the same trip, I was attracted to a triangular cave opening where I could shelter from the high wind for a while. I experienced a shamanic encounter there, confirming my double identity, and written about in another Tattooed Buddha article.

Heading to the ferry to leave Iona and return to London, I was surprised to see a white dog coming down a hill from my right to exactly intersect my path. It reminded me of the story of Colmcille’s white horse that cried frothy goodbyes on his shoulder shortly before he died. My dog seemed a budget version of the same. He also seemed to be having a lot of trouble with fleas at the time.

Another time, after a long spell traveling away from home, I returned to be met by a beautiful white cat, surely a descendant of Pangur Bán, a cat said to have been originally owned by Colmcille. What a lovely surprise!

Back to the question about destiny, calling and signs? My answer then is yes, in my experience they certainly pop up. I can’t classify any of them as wishful thinking.

They are too few and far between. They are like reminders. Of a destiny, a calling? On a path on which you learn to sit in the saddle backwards. You can’t see the way ahead and only connect dots afterwards. “A man can claim nothing unless it has been given to him from heaven,” said John the Baptist. “If it is meant for you, it will not pass you by,” though many other things you think you want, will. 

As they say in Ireland, that seems about the way of it.

https://www.shamanicdruidry.info/celtic-buddhist-priest-training/

 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

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