Not Even Not Zen 396: Puthujjana, Back to the Ordinary

Puthujjana

Back to the Ordinary

We immerse ourselves in the ordinary tasks that are part of the flow. When we want, our chores move us toward the goals of good will. Such a will is always with us. We cut bread with good intent, sit on the grass with it, walk the stairs with it, and wash clothes with it. We live in mundane bodies and do mundane things.

Our motivation is true. Our resolve, however small, is a thing that changes the world. We do ordinary things with holy intent.

We know this will lead us to ordinary ends, to endure normal lives, to come to unexceptional deaths. We carry the usual burdens to average conclusions. We maintain awareness of the moving patterns and the configurations of the world in this, our state of natural ease in the ordinary things.

We know where events lead. We laugh at tiny surprises in outcomes, for we know ourselves. When we are us, we are accompanied by good will and our long-cultivated traits, surrounded by nature, by humanity, and by being in harmony with our true nature.

We forget the workings of the littlest fragments of the mundane world. We do not work. And yet things are accomplished. We are part of the river of life and we are aware of it in an intimate way. The flow of joy and sadness around us is not a matter for thought. We do not need to think as we are helping others with the vital, the important, the very forgettable, the very ordinary ways.

Not Even Not Zen 395: Arhant, Freedom

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Arhant

Freedom

We are free to put down and pick back up our human goals. We exult in the freedom from desire. And we do not exult. Freedom from desire is the background of life, an element of the water in which we swim. We are alive in our power to put down our cares and pick them up again, at will, as is useful.

We do not need. We do not want. Even our good will, we can pick up or put down. Even freedom, we can use or discard. We can tie ourselves to the mundane. We do so to swirl and whip against the currents along with others, our friends. We can let go; and we can be free again.

 

Not Even Not Zen 394: Anagami, Good Will

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Anagami

Good Will

In our freedom, we inspect the core of our being. We find love streaming from us, given freely, without thought. It flows like a river around the world, unceasing, sourceless, constantly refreshed. Our endless affection is a part of our existence, of being in a human shape, of having a body and mind, mortal or immortal. We are ceaselessly in love. We do not need to make a choice about affection. Nevertheless, sometimes people choose.

We choose to cultivate our skills in kindness. We pay attention to the results of good deeds. We turn inward and outward with a discerning eye to improve the good will of our humanity. We learn to love with the clarity of purpose brought by a teacher of tenderness, a student of friendship, a lover of all joys and sorrows.

We give of our lives with a tenderness powered by all human essence. We reach out the way life reaches to life, even the way at times non-life reaches out. It is a lazy interaction. It happens without intention. At times, we add to it. We bring the forcefulness of will, of discipline, of our discerning eye.

Our will is good. No choice is needed to make it so. Often, the choice is made.

 

Not Even Not Zen 393: Sakadagami, Ceasing Desire

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Sakadagami

Ceasing Desire

Our yearnings produce our sorrows. We know it. We have come to this understanding not only with our rational mind, not only with our emotions, not only with our bodies or souls, but with our total self and not-self beyond. We comprehend this truth utterly.

We practice letting go of wants. We test our abilities. With repeated letting go of desires, with experiments for longer lengths of time, we improve. We become skilled at discarding desires. We release them. We let them drift away altogether.

 

We want nothing.

We can sit. We can smile at the lightness of existence, at the ephemeral nature of ourselves, our bodies, our lives. We are empowered, weightless, because we have let go of a burden. Our lack of clinging, our lack of resistance to the currents of life, lets us drift free. Our spiritual liberty suffuses us. We can let go even of the mind, of the concept of self.  

Once, there were scenarios in our heads, our human ability to say 'what if,' and with that ability, a tendency to focus on hypothetical cases, on status, on circumstances, on imaginary rewards that produce actual disappointment, on imaginary failures that aim us toward real failure.

 

Once, we were the cause of our suffering. Having realized our responsibility for our travails, we have let go of human desires.

Not Even Not Zen 392: Sotapanna, With the Stream

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Sotapanna

With the Stream

We understand the flow of humanity, of life, and of non-life. We are not moving beyond the ordinary. Our skills within the flows of life allow our achievements to come to us easily. We swim in the currents with less effort than we once did. We let events carry us to where we want to go.

It is a wonderful thing to glide with the swirling world, to move in harmony with it, to fit naturally within its patterns. We often see events before they occur and guide ourselves accordingly. Even when we do not look ahead, even when we do not direct ourselves to any goal, we find ourselves moving naturally to where is best, to doing right things with little effort, to achieving what is the most necessary.

 

Many do not strive for more. They mark this as success. Still, there is striving in us. Still, there is disappointment and suffering. Still, we feel a connection to the river of life, the flows of joy and sadness. We see that we should address the source of disappointments inside.

Not Even Not Zen 391: Puthujjana, The Ordinary

Puthujjana

The Ordinary

In time, we awake to the moving patterns and the configurations of the world. We reach a state of ordinary awareness about ordinary things. We gain a sense of the events around us, where they will lead, how friendships are formed through adventures together, how people brush shoulders and become enemies, how we make decisions, how we adjust to the decisions made by others, and more.

We may be curious as to why things are but we may only uncover how they are, instead, how they come to be, how they decay, and how they affect a sequence of events. It is something to understand this much, even, to know the workings of the littlest fragments of the mundane world.

We strive and learn the ways of our nature, of the world around us, the sciences of life and non-life, of the arts and rules of human and non-human interactions. We feel our connection to the river of life, the flow of joy and sadness around us. We become aware of gulfs of sorrows and of the sources of disappointments inside.

We may not yet know how to leave behind such disappointments. We are testing the ordinary ways.

Not Even Not Zen 390: Samsara, the Flow

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Samsara

The Flow

We are in the flow but we are not aware of it. We are born to the river of life but arrive ignorant of its currents. Early on, we are surprised when circumstances around us change. Even after we grow wiser, for a long while we respond to changes in the flow immediately, without consideration. We wonder why we feel pain and disappointment, pleasure and joy, growth and healing, injury and decay.

All creatures are immersed in the swirling stream of the world. All of them create the eddies, drifts, and rushes. Together we make the way. We influence the patterns even before we are born. We shape them after we die. We are an origin of the current even as we are buffeted by it, driven by it to our injuries, to sorrows, to tears, to despair, to peace, to rage, to calm, and to love.  

We are in the flow.

Not Zen 203: Suddenly Not So Sudden

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Suddenly, Not So Sudden

The day after harvest, a farmer drove his cart into town. On the way, he passed over a wooden bridge he had been using for years.

"That's twice as much as last week!" he exclaimed, when he was asked to pay a toll. There was a guard on the end of the bridge near the town. He had been there for six years, ever since the mayor imposed charges for using the road.

"Chief raised it," grunted the guard. He tilted his helmet down low to his eyebrows.

"For no reason?"

"I don't ask questions." The other man's expression turned to a scowl. "You ask. He’s your second cousin, not mine."

 

"Don’t blame this on me. I don’t know him."

"Maybe if you did you wouldn’t have to pay a toll. But you do. Everyone does." The guard stuck out his hand. "It's twice as much as yesterday, not last week."

With no good choice, the farmer reached into his hidden pockets and found enough to pay. He drove into town and, on the main road, dodged a police officer to whom he would have to pay a bribe if stopped. When he got to the market, he set up next to the other farmers. After they each sold another something for luck, he asked them why the bridge price had gone up. No one knew. They were all angry about it.

Before noon, three farmers paid a priest to ask the chief for the reason. At the town hall, however, the chief barred the doors. His men, after an argument lasting almost an hour, turned away the priest. So, starting the next day, the farmers raised their prices. Townsfolk hated the extra costs. Eventually, though, they adjusted to the consequences of the higher toll.

Two years later, the area experienced its longest season of fine weather in anyone's lifetime. Even the dangerous part of the pre-harvest months saw no large storms. Usually, there were a few and they did some damage to the crops. Not this time. The farmer and his family gathered in their best yields in a decade. Of course, the tax collector knew how to find them. He arrived at the farm one morning  as the family was loading carts.

 

“Collection is on time this year,” said the collector. “The governor wanted to reach everyone promptly.”

“But that’s half again more than last year,” the farmer protested when presented with the bill. “I haven’t got that much.”

“But you will,” said the tax collector. He gestured to the laden carts.

The farmer paid for a priest to travel and plead his case. He enlisted his friends and family. Even his second cousin the mayor chipped in by hiring guards to ride with the priest. Everyone felt the sudden rise in taxes had to be due to corruption. Their little country hadn't started any new services or built any new roads. They weren't used to open extortion from the governor. Even the mayor seemed surprised.

 

The town sent its delegation but the news that came back from it wasn't good. No other town seemed upset enough to protest. They met no other delegation. The governor didn't care to meet with their town priest, either. He did send someone from his office who talked about patronage for an hour and tried to solicit bribes. In fact, the governor's representative seemed to feel the main part of his job was to accept favors on behalf of the governor.

"Well, I think we could try bribing the tax collector," said the mayor when he learned the news. He held a meeting of farmers and small businessmen. He gave advice to the few men around the table with him.

"He means he already has," whispered one businessman.

"Oh."  The farmer nodded, surprised.

"Don't tell anyone who is not in this meeting, though," the mayor continued.

"That means don't raise the bribe price by offering too much or weaken the benefit by spreading the news," clarified the businessman.

"No problem," said the farmer, who wondered what he could afford.

Later that week, he met with the tax collector and, red-faced, he arranged the bribe amount. He wondered about the mayor. His second cousin had kindly included him in the secret town meeting. He felt grateful for it. But he knew in his heart he didn't quite deserve it. He didn't understand how this could go on, how his own relative had proven criminal about the bridge but had protested the corruption in farm taxes, how the man who had barred the doors of town hall and refused to listen to the priest had nonetheless sent the priest to petition against a higher level of malfeasance.

Two years later, the farmer's lands suffered a flood. It nearly wiped him out. The governor refused to assist. He still sent his tax collector with his outrageously high demands, though.

In five years, after a fine harvest, the governor raised the farm tax again. The mayor raised tolls, too.

The greatest disaster, though, took place after eight years more. Then, the country got a new ruler. He didn't rise to power through using violence, although he incited riots in large towns. He exerted just enough unrest to rally his cause. He did much more damage when his reign began. The astonishing thing was he announced he was going to steal from the country. And his followers accepted it. He broke ground on a bridge he didn't intend to build. He laughed about it. He pulled troops from the mountain border and sent them to patrol inland, keeping down any talk of rebellion. He raised highway taxes. At the same time, he said there would be no upkeep spent on any road.

"He has throngs of people on his side," the farmer complained to the priest.

"He does," agreed the priest.

"But he steals from the docks, the roads, the harvest, everything!"

"So it seems to me." The priest nodded.

"He takes money from local taxes and regional funds. He sells bad equipment to the army. That's the same as stealing from them. He says he will make this little nation great and powerful. But how? What does that even mean, really?"

"It is just a popular thing to say, I think," explained the priest.

"He enforces different rules for people in power than for ordinary people. He allows better privileges for his friends and family. It's fascism, they say. He allows the rich to buy themselves immunity from the law."

"That's what corruption is, yes. I'm not sure why there is such a need to call it something else."

"Because it's different?"

"You were quick to notice his frauds. But our country was corrupt before. Many years ago, I remember you complained about it. But you stopped complaining."

"It wasn't this corrupt."

"Did you become accustomed to corruption? Do you now only recognize it because it is worse? When it hurts you more than others? It was complacency about the old level of corruption that got us here. Our country got worse because, little by little, our people grew accepting of our corruption."

Not Even Not Zen 389: Nothing Casual

Nothing Casual

When we were in college, I announced a semester away,

no classes, clanks of plates around us, 

in the middle of the dining hall, 

a small table for four, voices at a murmur.  

"Why?" asked one of my friends.

I lifted a fork, whiffed the lasagna.

"Well, I got to make money."

Everyone nodded. 

Then I stuffed the cheesy tomato sauce into my mouth.

That night, a young woman grabbed me

as I passed her in the hall, a friend of a friend.

"I don't know how to ask this," she said,

"but I want you to spend the night."

She kissed me. It felt awkward, but nice.

I'd never thought about being with her

but there was my money problem coming.

"I don't want to lead you on," I said. 

"I'm leaving in a couple of weeks."

"Yeah, I heard." Her eyes so clear,

her expression so serious, she did not flinch. 

"That's perfect."

For a moment, I stood and waited.

I expected more. And more came, but not in words,

only in her watchful expression,

her tight grip on my arm,

our jeans pressed hard together,

hip to hip. She trembled.

For ten seconds. Twenty seconds.

Until I nodded. "Okay, then."

She sighed. Her grip relaxed

but she did not let go.

And we walked and talked into the evening. 

A couple months later, she phoned me and said, 

"Why don't you take time off work

and come on up?"

"Well, I can only stay a couple nights," I replied.

Her expression, even on the phone,

remained flat and serious. 

She murmured, "Perfect."

When I had a girlfriend, she called 

to ask how it was going.

When I had a different one, the same.

Once on the phone she said,

"Let me know when you're between girlfriends."

A year later, she transferred to a different college.

In the spring, she called,

and sounded more confident now

as she stated flatly,

"My roommate is leaving for the weekend.

I'd like you to come up."

Once a year, twice a year, 

in five years she called to say 

there was a political rally

held a few miles from my home. 

"I'm driving down," she said. 

"Why don't I stay at your place?"

Once, she wrote to plan a camping trip with me. 

Another time, she called to invite me skating.

A few times, she texted, Are you between friends? 

"Your friend calls me the butch one?" 

she asked, the next year.

"Well, yeah." She had arrived in hiking gear,

hair short, heavy boots,

and talked about her lovers.

She considered for a moment

and replied, "Fine. I'm flattered."

She rooted for me getting married

in the next year

and I asked, "Do you want to be in it?"

"Hell yeah. I want to wear a tux."

But when my wife called us old, casual lovers,

fifteen years later, a few hundred phone calls,

letters, texts, emails, remaining friends later,

the same woman frowned.

"No," she replied instantly.

"I don't like the word casual."

  -- Eric Gallagher

Not Even Not Zen 388: Only a Work Friend

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Only a Work Friend 

On day three of the job, I ducked under merry streamers 

and a cardboard letter H, hung in a doorway from a party 

and found myself in a cramped office, papers stacked,

four desks full, three computers, and a scanner.

The space reeked of ozone from recent print jobs, 

of petri dishes we could see from the neighboring office,

of the sterilized hospital clinic down the hall.

One door down, I saw a better office

but an architect had filled it with chemistry hoods

as if to allow for industrial production. 

She strolled into the room behind me with a smile. 

It was her job to to give me information

but she said, “I only know so much.” 

On day twenty-one, we sat 

heads in our hands over network diagrams

and yard-long blueprints.

The office boasted scents of coffee,

warm roasted and dark. 

This time, I asked about the streamers in the doorway.

She waved her hand in silent response.

Right, not important. 

On day four hundred twelve

I came with a team. 

The three of us swapped out the computers

while she wrung her hands 

but when we replaced her fat, heavy monitors 

with thin screens, twice the width, 

she clapped and said, "Oh, fancy!"

Our team members laughed.

The youngest shook his head and blushed.

On day five hundred seventy two, 

she and I together crept around plastic sheeting,

duct tape above, more tape creating doors.

We had to shout over the sound of an air compressor.

Her office had been re-designed by someone

to keep the dust inside. 

“How long has it been like this?” I asked.

“Half a year now." Her hands rubbed, finger over finger,

betraying her annoyance. "They’re taking out the asbestos.” 

“But you have to work here.”

She chuckled. “Yeah. I don’t know what to tell ya. 

They don’t know where to put me.”

On day eight hundred twelve, we watched a different crew 

As they carted away a heavy, oak desk. 

At my call, our guys trundled in with a cart

newer pieces of furniture on top.

We brought plastic and laminate stuff 

instead of solid wood

but we could plug her desks in. 

We showed her the lift buttons.

“It goes up and down!" She clapped and laughed.

"This is so amazing!”

Day one thousand one hundred seventeen,

sitting down with blueprints again, 

we got a visit from a younger lady. 

"I want you to meet my new assistant," she said.

She stood up and gave the thinner woman a hug.

She sat down and squeezed my hand

with some sort of hint I couldn't comprehend.

A few minutes later, she excused herself

and I asked the assistant how she liked it.

The young lady sighed.

She said, "I’ve never had such a nice job. 

I love working with her.”

Day one thousand nine hundred one,

I put my hands on my hips and gazed around me.

"This place is so big now."

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!"

She bustled in with a chuckle and an assistant behind.

"I hear you fixed it all again."

"Well, I tried."

"You want some coffee?" She ran to the pot,

a brick red one, warm and full,

but her young lady took it from her

and started to pour for everyone.

There were a dozen cups hanging from hooks. 

We sat and talked for a few minutes.

I mentioned the latest renovations

and she waved her coffee.

“I don’t know what to tell ya.

Things are going okay I guess but who knows how.”

On day three thousand twenty-seven 

she called to apologize.

She had to push our meeting back by a week.

All good, I replied. 

"We're always good," she said.

I agreed, "We are."

On day three thousand thirty one,

just an email, a note in the list of messages,

one of so many,

swearing she did really want to meet. 

'Honestly, sweetie, you’re the best.'

But she had to put it off again

really, this time.

No choice.

On day three thousand forty-four

I strode in on our assigned day and time,

unchecked, unannounced.

The office air was cool.

In the distant lab spaces, I heard people walking,

and the clink of distant glassware.

In strode her assistant. I plopped into a seat.

"Where is she?" I called. "Let's get to work."

The young lady stood for a moment,

a look of confusion on her face,

and then she raised her hands

and broke down crying.