While in the county jail in 2005, I moved to a lockdown dorm where strict racial lines had been erected between lunch tables, but only during chow time. I was unaware of this when I first moved there. After my first dinner, I left my table and walked between two other tables, only to get surrounded by a bunch of members of a different race. I thought I was about to be beaten up. Though this ended up not being the case, the fear and shame of the moment helped fuel a pretty deep resentment toward that particular group of people.
After my time in the county jail, I graduated to prison, where the Dharma solidified its presence in my life. I paroled in 2012. A couple of years later, while working on a construction site, I saw that a doorway I needed access to was behind red danger tape. The danger tape, which meant no passage, was set up by a roofing crew in hopes of preventing people from getting burned by hot tar.
I decided to cross the barrier anyhow (some habits die hard). I was swiftly accosted by a handful of perturbed roofers, loudly letting me know I didn’t belong there. I felt surrounded and I flashed inside. Anger arose. I wanted to say something that I shouldn’t. I wanted to do something that I shouldn’t. And then, the very next moment, I remembered the incident from the county jail and realized that I was reenacting the fear and shame I’d stuffed away nine years earlier. I immediately relaxed and apologized for going where I shouldn’t have.
If the present is the inheritance of the past, and the future is the inheritance of the present, doesn’t this mean that the future is the inheritance of the past? No. The future is only the inheritance of the present. The past ends at the arising of feeling tone and the future begins at the reaction to it. Fortunately, there is a tiny space of emptiness, between the two, where alternate futures begin.
