Not Zen 66: Home Temple

A young man became engaged to an older woman. Everyone in their village thought it would be an excellent match. But on the eve of the marriage, he called off the ceremony. Without consulting anyone, not even his closest friends, he left his home and traveled to the nearest monastery.

His fiance knew that this was something he'd considered. She had, too. In fact, she had taken him on a tour of the local holy sites. She had an easy time tracking him. However, when she went to visit her lover, the monks would not allow her in.

She climbed the hill next to the compound and spotted her man meditating in the eastern courtyard. She hiked to the east wall. With the help of a pear tree, she scaled the wall and, unhurt by the drop on the other side, she strode to confront her lover.

His head was shaved and he wore a saffron robe. He seemed unsurprised by her presence. But he did not call for the other monks. She sat and adopted a pose of meditation similar to his.

"Are you at peace?" she asked after a while.

"I think I am coming to inner peace, yes," he replied.

"Did we have happiness at home? I thought we did, both of us."

"We did. Very much. But what is worldly happiness compared to eternal happiness?"

"It's nothing, of course. And what about love?"

"What about it? What is love compared to enlightenment?"

"They're teaching you nothing," she said sternly. "I taught you more. What is enlightenment without love that flows naturally from it? Aren't they joined? Shouldn't you know?"

The young man had no reply. The next day, he asked his teacher this question about love from enlightenment. He was not satisfied with the answer. A day later, he asked again and perceived a similar evasion. So he returned to his home town. He made apologies to his friends. Then he married the woman who had shown him the way to and from the temple.

Not Zen 65: Passage

A woman lost her infant to fever. Her mother had died not long before. The prospect of raising the daughter had sustained her through the loss of her mother. But there was nothing to sustain her through the loss of her child. The second death, so soon after the first, put her into depression.

The woman found it grew harder over the weeks for her to function normally. She performed her family duties without energy. She stopped cleaning. Her neighbors and friends criticized her behavior but she couldn't make herself care. She wasn't able to confide with her husband about her troubles because she felt she had failed him just as she'd failed her dead mother.

She considered suicide. Her husband was a good man, she thought, and could find another wife.

Before she took action, she went to her friend, a roshi who had studied meditation for many years. Her friend listened to her troubles with sympathy.

"I don't know how to deal with this loss," the young woman concluded. "You have studied detachment. Maybe you can help me."

"You cannot solve this problem by detaching yourself from it," answered the roshi.

"What? That's the opposite of what you should say. Even I know Buddhism better than that."

"Maybe you should tell me how it goes."

"You're supposed to say that my worldly desires will bring me sorrow."

"Oh, they will. They have."

"And that I should learn to let go of my worldly desires."

"You're correct."

"Then that's the way I should rid myself of this pain."

"No. You cannot deny the loss of your loved ones. You cannot deny what you feel. To attempt that is contrary to the Way. Never deny your expectations, hopes, or loves."

"But they bring me great sorrow!"

"You cannot avoid sorrow. You must live through it. And eventually you may move past it."

"That will take too long!  It could take my whole life."

The roshi nodded.  She insisted, "Nevertheless."

Not Zen 64: The Best Way

A young man traveling alone stopped at a temple to ask for directions. An attendant there gave him the information he needed. Before the traveler turned to leave, he asked, “And what's the best way?”

The attendant understood that this was a different question. He tapped the floor. When the traveler did not seem to understand, he said, “This way is best.”

The traveler left unhappy, having interpreted the answer as conceit for the temple. As he walked, he grew more and more impatient with the tapping of the hallway floor. He met a woman walking up the long hill road toward the temple and asked her the same question.

"Can you show me the best way?"

The woman smiled and tapped the ground with her foot. Then she continued on her way. The traveler felt this, under the circumstances, was a bit better.

Farther on, he happened to meet an elderly man who was apparently coming back from town.

"Can you show me the best path?" he said.

This man happened to work in the temple. He had lived in the area for a long time, tending to the monks and to the people of the town. He recognized that the traveler had been to the temple and had probably asked others the same question.

"Continue on this road," he said.

The young man was not satisfied.

"Continue on this road into town," said the old fellow. He gestured to the road behind him. "Turn left and walk another block. There you will find a bank. Stand in front of the bank and meditate. The answer will come."

Curious, the traveler did as he was told. He walked into town and found the bank, an impressive building with rich ornaments and a false brick front. There he stood, studying the building until he grew tired. When he could stand no longer, he sat. A bank guard came out and accosted him.

"Hey you!" he said. “Get out of here.”

“And the best way is?”

“To get moving!”

Not Zen 63: Not a Contrarian

A vixen lost one of her cubs to a hunter's trap. She warned her surviving cub to stay away from the hunter, his prey, and his snares. The next day, while the vixen was gone, the cub spotted a thrush that had been wounded. He stalked the bird. Then he sprinted after it and chased it into a thorn bush.

When the vixen returned, she found her cub bleeding from his snout. He'd been cut by thorns. She held him down and cleaned him.

"Can you imagine what would have happened if the hunter had been following that bird?" she said. "You would have been caught."

"He wasn't anywhere around." The cub winced as she licked his wounded face.

"He injured the bird. He must have been someplace."

The next day, the vixen left after giving her cub a warning. Nevertheless, when she returned a few hours later, she found him gone. Fearing the worst, she dashed from place to place across her territory. She discovered her cub alive but dangling by his hind legs from a grass-twine snare.

"Didn't I tell you that the hunter sets his traps here?" she said. She climbed onto a tree branch to chew the cord.

"I saw the snares and went around them."

"You missed this one." She broke the twine. Her cub fell to the ground. "You're lucky it didn't get your neck. You're lucky that you're big and didn't have to fall far."

On their way home, it became clear to the vixen that her son still had not learned his lesson. As soon as sensation returned to his limbs, he began to stray. He was a contrary child and would not obey her.

"Perhaps you'll listen to your father," she said. She ran off to find her mate.

The cub's father was not surprised to hear the latest news. However, he didn't think he could persuade his son to listen.

"You must," the vixen insisted. "Take him hunting with you tomorrow. Help him learn enough wisdom so that I may have peace."

"That's fair," the fox agreed. "One way or another, you deserve peace."

The next morning, the fox met his son at the mouth of the den. He led the cub through a bramble patch. Instead of running with heads held high, the cub learned, they could crouch low and pass unharmed. At the other end of the thorns, they stopped to study a rabbit warren.

"This is a good place," said the fox. "The hunter knows it, too, and has set snares."

"I smell rabbits," said the cub.

Not long past dawn, the hunter arrived. He cut down two snares, one that had missed and another that had caught a young rabbit. He had taken a hare from a different set of traps, so he made small pile of the bodies. Then he knelt to dress his game.

The fox cub's mouth began to water.

"I'll bet I could get those," said the cub.

"Sure," his father agreed. "That way your mother will get some peace. Try it. You could grab a rabbit and run. They're not heavy. His back is turned. Go!"

"What?" The fox cub inched forward. He eyed the rabbit carcasses. He turned his wary gaze on his father. "But mother said the hunter would kill me!"

"Only if he catches you."

"Are you trying to get me killed?" squealed the cub. This, the hunter overheard.

He picked up his knife and game bag to chase after the foxes. Through the brambles they ran, although the father was not in too much of a hurry to make sure they kept low. They escaped without injury.

After they got home, the father gave his cub instructions to go out and hunt for himself. Then, laughing, he set off. A few hours later, the vixen returned. She found her cub waiting for her at the mouth of the den.

"You're still here?" she said. "I thought I told your father to take care of you."

"Yes, and father told me to take a rabbit from the hunter. He tried to get me killed!"

The vixen sat down to hear the whole story.

"Ah," she said as her cub concluded his version of the events. "Your father knows how to give you instructions."

Not Zen 62: See No Reason

A spiritual teacher had, as her worst student, her own son.

This teacher was a kind soul, known for being forgiving and generous. But her son rebelled against this gentleness. He despised it as a weakness and as a sign that his mother was mentally feeble. She gave up preaching to him about charity. Instead, she tried to show him practical things.

For a while, her appeal to his self-interests worked. Then he stopped listening to her at all. He refused to go to school. She tried to persuade him of the value of an education. Her arguments were seen as irrefutable to everyone else around her. Her son didn't agree. He rebelled against her reasoning even when it meant admitting that his own conclusions were nonsensical.

The next summer, a distant relative offered the boy a job as a laborer. He accepted although he understood that he would not earn enough to move out of his mother's house. Unfortunately, he was bad at the simple tasks he was assigned. He did not always show up for work on time. He did not work hard.  He didn't listen to his supervisors' instructions with care. He wasted his own efforts and the productivity of others with his sloppiness. Within a few weeks, he found himself out of a job.

“Now that you have time again,” his mother said upon receiving the news. “You should return to your studies.”

“I have no studies,” he said.

“I bought a book of logic for you.” She tried to put it into his hands. “Logic is good in every situation. Learning this would help you in all of your life, even in your jobs as a laborer.”

He pushed the book aside. “That is a waste. You are trying to teach me how to think. I see no reason to learn logic.”

“Like many things, this is a skill you will never understand the reason to learn,” she admitted, “until you have already learned it and put it to use.”

Not Zen 61: Thrill Seeking

For two years, a student of the Dao emulated her roshi, Sara. Sara was an older woman who lived a quiet life. She worked hard and rested sensibly. She meditated every night. On occasion, she socialized with a few friends.

Everyone agreed that the roshi was in touch with her De. Her student, Humi, admired her for it. Nevertheless, she found the lifestyle tedious to imitate. She performed the same tasks every day although none of them interested her. She supposed it was part of her process of enlightenment.

One day, Humi received an invitation to go hang gliding with friends. It was something her roshi would never do.

"I hope you don't take offense if I go," she told Sara.

"Why would I?" Sara exclaimed. "This is the kind of thing that young people often enjoy. You can go out and break a few bones. You'll heal."

"Really? I thought you would tell me that hang gliding is just a form of thrill seeking, that it's contrary to the spirit of Daoism."

"How foolish." The roshi shook her head. "You haven't progressed as much as I thought."

"What does that mean?"

"If you want to go gliding and you let your conception of the Dao stop you, then you don't love hang gliding. And you don't love excitement. And you don't love the Dao. You only love the false idol of the Dao that you've made for yourself."

Humi was taken aback. She had always said the right words. She had always done the things that Sara did. She'd thought their concept of the Dao was similar. This was the first time that she'd realized Sara's practice of the Dao was not a ritual but truly a part of her. Humi had, unfortunately, made Sara's practice of the Dao into a ritual for herself but it had brought her no closer to enlightenment.

The next week, Humi went hang gliding. The grass on the hills was dark green. The wind swept up the slopes and carried her away without effort. The moments of clarity she felt while in the air astounded her. She knew she would remember this day for the rest of her life.

She flew three times and then she broke her leg on the third landing.

Her roshi went to visit her in the hospital. She sat down without saying hello. The exchange between student and roshi puzzled Humi's friends.

"Do you feel improved now?" asked Sara. She ignored the cast on her student's leg.

"Very much so," said Humi.

Not Zen 60: Just This

In the cold seas of the arctic there lived an bull orca. He swam with the members of his pod, hunted seals and schools of fish with his pod, sang stories with his pod, looked at the stars with his pod, and played with the other members of his pod. His family of orcas occupied his entire life. As he grew into his adulthood, he wondered why he had to stay with a single group.

Why he couldn't roam with the wilder orcas who lived solitary lives? He'd seen them from a distance.  He envied their freedom.

One day, a female elder called the clan together for a meeting. The young bull decided not to attend but he wasn't given a choice. Other orcas gathered around him and talked about their travels. It was a subject of conversation he found tedious. As a junior member, he struggled to be polite with the males and females who remembered and debated. He settled for being silent. Even that was a struggle.

From a distance, his grandmother watched. 

A moment after he answered a question about where to dive for squid with, "How would I know?  We haven't dived for squid in months," his grandmother swam up to him. 

She whispered so that only he could hear, “From birth to death, it's just this.”

His spirits sank. His grandmother was strong and wise. She had seen into his spirit, right to what he was afraid of most: that his life would always be like this. She confirmed it. This was life. This was what it was. All day long and into the evening, he despaired about her words.

He spent a few days saying goodbye to the pod and to each of its members. He'd made up his mind to leave. He'd go to the deepest ocean, perhaps to sink to the bottom, stay, and die. He listened for the sounds made by the solitary orcas to the north, denizens of the deeper seas. The same thing was true for them, too: this was all there was, just this. From birth to death, existence was what was in him and around him. When he lived alone, there would be even less around him and he prepared for that.

There would be octopuses to see in the shallows and in the sea bottoms. The orca spent some time diving to them to study how they lived. They hunted crabs, he noticed after a few dives. He scooped up one of the crabs and ate it when he got hungry.

He explored the schools of fish, large and small. Sometimes they fled from him but sometimes not. He swam up to the land animals that ventured out to sea in boats. They usually tried to keep their distance but a few got close enough for him to get a good look, one on four legs, others on two. As the pod traveled south in the next week, he spent several days observing a strip of sand and ice on which a few polar bears roamed. Bears competed with orcas for their favorite food, seals. He was surprised to find that he held a grudging respect for bears. As swimmers, they were no match for seals and yet they hunted. They succeeded. They lived.

In time, the orca came to respect even the seals and walruses. He'd thought they were annoying before, especially the walruses, but he observed that some of them were tough, some were fast, and some were clever, much as the members of his pod were.

To his surprise, he began to find the pod meetings interesting. The others of his clan were no brighter than they had been before. They were no less full of silly talk about the weather or the fish or the kelp. But he understood that these things mattered to them and he felt more generous of their concerns. Other orcas did not often have grand thoughts about the purpose of life, the differences between males and females, the cultures of other orcas, or the ways of creatures that they hardly ever saw, such as dolphins, pilot whales, or deep sea squid. He felt that those creatures did have their own cultures, however primitive, but even his grandmother held few opinions about them.

He learned to relax during the pod meetings and listen for the observations made by the other orcas. He took their wisdom as he found it. Sometimes they surprised him and he learned from those who he'd disdained.

He never got around to leaving. He watched the lone orcas from a distance and realized they rarely vocalized except in anger or in hunting. Swimming alone would mean living without the company of those others, who were solitary by nature. It would be a tedious existence, nearly purposeless without others to care for, and anyway, from birth to death, this was all that there was. All that surrounded him was beautiful like the squids that flashed in the deeps and terrible like the bull sperm whales that hunted giant creatures where orcas could not go. The orcas had their place, though, hunting the whales in their turn. 

Existence was all those things at once. It was also all those things he could not understand from tides to deep currents, from storms to quakes, from swells to waterspouts. He knew he did not truly understand the bright sun or the stars at night or any other lives, small or great. Even before his birth and after his death, he was a part of an overwhelming, unknowable everything. Each mundane act and every miraculous effort played its part. Ordinary breaths of air and events like flocks of seabirds falling from the sky were equal. The pod meetings, too, played their part in how things were.

Years passed and his grandmother reached nearly ninety years before she was injured defending one of her great-grandchildren from another pod of orcas. As their group asserted its territorial claim over the bay, they watched their injured matriarch. For a day or two, she hung on but her wounds festered. She grew feverish. It became clear that she was going to die. She rested near the surface and watched the calves playing not far away from her. 

Her grandson, now one of the oldest males in the pod, floated up to the surface next to his grandmother and kept her company. She talked about the sun and its warmth. She wondered about birds and where they go. She reminded him that “between birth and death, there is only this.”

“Grandmother,” he replied. “Before birth and after death, I think it's the same, just this.”

“You shine in the sun,” she told him. They nuzzled and watched the world for a few hours more until his grandmother was dead. Her body began to sink.

The grandson paid no more heed. He blasted a great call to the others. He gathered them to a pod meeting. They discussed plans for travel eastward into the bay to hunt the great schools of fish they'd followed and then they left.

Not Zen 59: Parroting the Instructor

A sailing instructor on an island doubled as the chaplain and meditation tutor for a resort hotel.  As he matured, he worked less as a sailor and more as a religious mentor.  With an eye to entertaining his tourist clients, he trained his pet parrot to repeat the phrases, "one hand clapping," "chop wood, carry water," and "dog has buddha nature."  Morning and evening, visitors entering his imitation pagoda attached to the hotel were greeted by "chop wood, carry water" or some similar phrase until they grew tired and asked the instructor to put the bird away in a separate room, which he always did.

Another employee of the resort hotel stopped by one day.  The parrot's cage rested at the front of the chapel and the green bird in it rocked back and forth on its perch. 

“Sound of one hand,” called the parrot.  “Sound of one hand.”

The visitor put his hands on his hips.

“Why in the world did you teach it to say things like that?” he asked.

“Ah.”  The chaplain tapped his nose.  “I teach classes on Zen, you know.  I find that the parrot discourages students from repeating my words.”

“Is that all?”

“No.  More accurately, the benefit with students is a side effect.  Years ago, I trained the parrot to say catch phrases of wisdom in order to keep myself from repeating them.  It worked.  Of course, it keeps my clients entertained, too, but the purpose of the bird is to make me a better teacher.”

“I don't get it.”

“Every time I find myself using stock phrases with my students instead of putting things in my own words, I'm forced to ask myself, 'Do I know as little of Zen as my parrot?'”

Not Zen 58: A New Idol

On a holiday, members of two churches arrived at a soup kitchen together. The churches sponsored the shelter and soup kitchen as a joint venture but normally they sent their members to work there on separate nights.

For a while, everyone worked well together. They divided up the cooking and administrative chores according to their skills. But their discussions ran towards religion and one evangelical member was incensed that members of the other church didn't take the bible literally.

"It's the word of God. It's by His hand!" he said.

"That's not what we believe," replied the man who was making peanut butter sandwiches. "We believe the bible is divinely inspired. That's different."

"How?" He set down the trash can he'd been carrying. "It sounds like you agree."

"No, the holy spirit comes through the hands of men. But men aren't perfect. We believe in the holy spirit more than the words men write."

"The bible is perfect because God guides it."

"Perfection isn't something we achieve on Earth," said the sandwich maker sadly. He shook his head and continued, "That's the point of the second commandment."

"That's against false idols."

"Back then people worshipped kings or golden statues, not books. But it still applies. Mortal men, even those who are very good, aren't perfect. They're not God. Worshipping them leads you away from God. God doesn't want you to mistake a symbol of Him for the true unknowable that is His spirit and His being."

"Are you trying to say the bible is a false idol?"

"I'm saying it's a mistake to worship the words in a book instead of the spirit behind it."

Not Zen 57: Not Grace Alone

After a meeting, as the members were clearing the chairs, a man named John mentioned that he saw an emergency technician save the life of a child.

"I hesitated to mention it," he admitted. "But I'm starting to feel it was a revelation. I think competence is part of what makes a saint.  The man who saved that little girl's life knew what was needed and he did it well."

"That's nice," said his wife. "But I don't agree about associating competence with sainthood. Trying to save that little girl's life and failing wouldn't have made anyone a bad person."

"But that's less good than succeeding," he thought out loud.

"Is it?" said his wife's best friend. "If competence is part of being good, wouldn't you have to say it's part of being a bad person, too?"

"You mean, if you're less competent, you're a worse person? I think I see what you mean. But even people you'd consider bad need to be competent. Maybe a thief robs a bank and gets away by car. He'd be worse if he was an incompetent driver and crippled someone crossing the street."

"You're carrying the example to extremes."

"I'm just pointing out that people try to do good things most of the time. Everyone resists killing people with their car, even axe murderers usually. You seem to be saying that competence doesn't matter."

"That's right. The saying is 'By grace alone shall ye be saved,' so I think competence doesn't matter to saintliness."

"But if you try to help someone and accidentally kill them instead, isn't that bad?"

"It's bad but it's not the same as murder."

"If someone tries to do good deeds all his life but keeps accidentally killing people, I'd have to say that, on balance, that's a pretty bad person, never mind the good intentions."

His wife and her friend laughed. "If you kept accidentally doing harm, wouldn't you learn to stop?"

"But ..."  He waved his arms. "A good person who does no good deeds? Who learns to deliberately do nothing? How is that a good person?"