Not Zen 130: Incompetence

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Incompetence

"This is where I am promoted beyond my competence," she said as she packed up her office. That day, she had been elevated to division chief in her state's transportation department.

Her former assistant said, "You'll be fine."

From the glances he gave her as he helped pack, she could tell he was worried.

She had never wanted a career. She had never wanted anything worldly. At the age of seventeen, she had joined her local nunnery as a novitiate. She'd lived with other nuns under an novitiate's vow. She'd traveled through her community with the sisters to do good works. In doing so, she met a man she liked. Although she had thought her infatuation with him was secret, he surprised her by proposing.

At the advice of the nuns and other novitiates, she left the professional ministry. She had intended to marry, raise good children, and work as needed. It was to be an ordinary life for her although, secretly, she hoped to return to her religious life.

In the eyes of her youthful self, the act of raising a family seemed simple. Soon she discovered that her work in the home was never done and that as he children grew she wanted to work out of the home to support them better. When she got a promotion, she still put in overtime so she could give to charity. She supported her extended family. She lent her money to friends to help them through crises. All of these choices led her to tie herself to her ordinary life more than she'd thought possible.

Three promotions later, here she was, packing her office.

She arrived to her new desk during lunch. That afternoon, she started in her role as the division chief with a series of interviews. She pulled her staff aside, one by one, to find out how things had gone wrong before. She accompanied them to their stations. She evaluated their work and learned who among them was capable of more.

"We've had three bosses here in six years," said a woman who worked at the front counter. Her movements seemed tired. "All of them failed. Two of them just gave up."

"I will not give up," she promised.

The next morning, she found orders on her desk from her supervisors. She let them wait.

Within a few weeks, she confirmed for herself that she'd been promoted beyond what she could manage. She'd seen that her staff had more than they could handle. With that in mind, she moved people into the roles that best fit them. She taught everyone to apologize.

Three years later, her old assistant visited.

"Everyone complains about your department," he said. "But everyone also says that performance has never been better. And you're still here. So I suppose this was not beyond your competence."

"I could tell you had doubts." She laughed. "In fact, it's beyond everyone's competence."

"No. You're doing it."

"I'm not, really." She folded her arms. "And no, I'm not managing with better staff or giving the old ones more responsibilities. They already had more than they can handle. All I did was teach them to drop their lowest priorities and to apologize for doing that."

"But everyone says service improved."

"I suppose it has. Once I told the staff they could do their most important tasks well and leave the rest undone, the only thing to teach was the apologizing. The staff are constantly saying that they're sorry they can't take on more tasks. But what they do, they do as well as they can."

"Your supervisors want to give your department more funds for the first time in twenty years. They wouldn't want to hear that you feel incompetent."

"Some jobs are beyond everyone's competence." She shrugged. "But still they need to be done."

Not Zen 129: The Spokeless Wheel

"There are no precepts, really," the nurse said as he strolled through the cracked-open door. A crowd of people had broken into the storefront.

"That is a dangerous thought." His friend's scowl deepened. He hesitated before he entered. When he finally moved, he jammed his hands into his pockets and kept his eyes on the broken glass that lay all over the floor.

"Look for something besides bandages," the first one said. "They're not having luck with those. We need tourniquets."

"I will not steal. I told you already, that is against the precepts."

"We should try to save the wounded people regardless."

They had come upon a crowd of around twenty people in a panic. Some in the crowd had participated in a demonstration, which had met a counter-demonstration, which had turned into a riot. Stones had been thrown. Shots had been fired. Now there were wounded men and women among the crowd. They and their friends had rushed to the drugstore to seek refuge and medicine.

When they found the doors locked, they broke in. Passers-by helped, including the nurse, who felt he could stop some people from dying if he worked quickly.

"The woman you are thinking of has surely bled too much already," said the reluctant fellow behind him.

"I see iodine." The man pointed to a shelf of bottles. "I'll grab that too. That's helpful."

"This package actually says it's a tourniquet." With an air of regret, the follower noticed the right box. He took two steps, bent, and picked it up. Behind it was another box of tourniquets, and another. The first man rushed over.

"Come," he hissed. He grabbed the rest. "We have to be fast."

Outside, the two men approached a woman who had been shot in the leg. Her friends were trying to stop her bleeding but her heartbeat pushed the red liquid through their fingers. They had not slowed her impending death.

The nurse pushed supplies into his friend's hands. He gave orders to the woman's companions, who were frantic and eager to help. They elevated her leg and held her. He knelt next to her and tied a tourniquet rope around her thigh. He tightened it until her bleeding slowed to a trickle.

"Right," he said. "You say you have experience. So bandage her. Who's next?"

A young man offered his left arm. He had ripped off his sleeve and tied it near his shoulder. The cloth didn't reach his pressure point and he hadn't pulled it tight enough. The nurse's friend elevated his arm while the nurse tied a proper bandage.

Finally, three people rushed forward with a late arrival, a young man who couldn't walk. A white splinter of bone jutted out of his bloodied leg below the knee.

"There are two stretchers in there," the nurse said to his friend. "Go in and grab them both."

"But ..."

"Hurry. This man needs carried somewhere else and so does the woman who was shot. Her friends put a bandage on and it looks good. But she's passed out."

A half-dozen people rushed back into the drugstore. The nurse's friend followed them. He had seen the stretchers, too, behind the sales counter. He gave directions. The other folks shouted in triumph as they carried out the body boards and straps. Then they grabbed other medical supplies. Again, they shouted with glee as they discovered what they needed.

"Why are you crying?" the nurse asked his friend on his return.

"Because they are wounded." His dark-haired friend had to wipe his eyes. He sniffed. "Because they fought other people. Because they stole. And because we theived these bandages and tools."

"We are doing what we can to save lives." The nurse kept working on the broken leg.

"We did it wrong."

"The precepts are a guide to thinking. That's all." He finished cleaning the wound. With a nod, he allowed the young man's friends to lay the blood-matted head down on the road. "They are not a rulebook in some lifelong game. It does not help you or anyone to blindly follow them."

The second fellow closed his mouth. He wiped his face with his sleeve while he watched his friend complete the temporary splint.

"Following the precepts helps others," he responded.

"That's a good point. It shows that you're thinking. Go on, then. I'm almost done here. Pick a precept and I'll explain it as a guide, not a rule."

"One of the five, one of the eight, or one of the ten?"

"Listen to you." The nurse laughed. He covered his patient in a blanket to aid against shock. "This is why I had to say there are no precepts."

"I pick 'refrain from stealing.' It is vital. You cannot refute the rightness of it."

"Fine. I won't attempt to refute it. Who can doubt that refraining from stealing is a good thing?  But saving the wounded is more important." The nurse motioned for the stretcher. Three men and a woman brought it over. They laid it down next to the prone body. "These people and we, too, broke into the store for medicines. They recognize that it was right to do. How can you not?"

"Perhaps they are wrong. Perhaps you are wrong."

"Does it feel wrong?"

Everyone crouched. His friend, too, knelt to lift the half-conscious man onto the stretcher.

"Maybe this is not stealing," said the nurse's friend. He raised his voice as the wounded man cried out in pain. "Most of these people were not taking the medicines for their own benefit. You weren't. The need is urgent. They and you could not wait and maybe let the wounded die."

"I agree." The stretcher carriers took over for a moment. They strapped the young man in place on the board. "But the store owner would not agree. The equipment and medicine has been lost to him. The police and your precepts do not agree with this either. Do you understand?"

"No."

One of the stretcher carriers asked if they could carry away the man with the broken leg. The nurse nodded. Another bleeding woman approached. She had received a cut along her arm from fingertip to elbow. The nurse peeled back her sleeve while the nurse's friend, with care and drying tears, elevated her arm.

"The precepts are not a rulebook," the nurse continued. "There are not eight spokes in your dharma wheel. There are no spokes at all. Or maybe there are an infinite number, an endless interconnection between moral discipline and the circle of mindfulness that holds everything together."

"If there are no spokes in the wheel, then I'm lost. That is too free for me."

"You have reasons, I understand. But loosen your grip on your false simplicity.  And tighten this bandage."

Not Zen 128: Prejudice

"How did you fail to notice?" said the elder karabash dog.  He turned to the other two members of his pack.  They stood over the flesh-stripped corpse of a sheep, one of the flock they had sworn to guard.

"Two jackals led me on a chase," explained the youngest.  His tan coat was smooth and unblemished. The mask of fur around his snout was dark with no flecks of grey.  "I fought them.  They kept laughing at me.  Then they ran off."

"There was a third," said the other.  His skin and fur were thick and brindled.  "When I brought my flock to join my brother's, I heard the growl of a jackal.  I crossed the hill.  At the top, I smelled blood.  When I glanced down, I saw the reason."

"Why did the jackal growl?"

"It was facing down a cheetah.  You know how cowardly they are.  The cheetah had stolen bites.  When confronted, it fled.  Afterwards, the jackal tried to drag off the rest of the body.  I fought him and won."

"Well done."  The elder hated to see any predator collect the spoils of their hunt.  Even if the body had been torn apart, as this one had, every degree of success needed to be met with discouragement.  Otherwise, predators would descend in droves upon the flock.  He could foresee that the next few days would be difficult enough.  The jackals and cheetahs would suspect weakness.

Karabash dogs often battled wolves, jackals, and bears.  It was what they lived for.  They protected livestock and took pride in their successes.  They travelled with the herds, contended with wild hunters, and showed no fear, not even of the bears.  The elder had lost his mate to such a fight although together with her, he had succeeded in driving the bear away.

He contemplated her greatness for a moment.  She had been mother to these two although he did not feel they were the best of her litters.  But then, they had been deprived of her presence, especially the youngest one.  She had been a force for calmness and for determination.  She had sought to protect her pups and her flocks like no other.  There had been no one like her in his life before and there would never be again.

"Some predators can be clever," he told the youngest.  He didn't want to discourage this one by being overly critical.  "In time, you'll learn."

"They are stupid," the lad snarled.  "They are low born, all of them."

The three split up for a while and patrolled the edges of the flock.  Like other karabash dogs, they did not guide herds.  The rams and the ewes did the leading from place to place.  They made decisions in a fashion known only to them.  These sheep, who smelled damp from the recent rain and liked the higher ground today, had decided not to move any farther.  The dogs protected them and nothing more.

In the late afternoon, the elder climbed a hill and surveyed the joined flocks.  He thought about his former mate.  She had loved this spot.  Once, he glimpsed something as it passed through distant trees.  A spotted pattern, it might have been a cheetah.  The sight angered him.  He had respect for all of his foes except those.  The cheetahs never defended their kill, no matter how hard won it was.  They never defended anything.  They were the opposite of his mate.

"I've seen those low-life cheetahs again."  The youngest came up the slope behind him.

"Yes, I know."

"They are the stupidest of all."

"I suppose."

The strong one came last up the slope.  He still reeked of his fight, his bloody triumph.

"No," he whispered. "The cheetahs are wise in their way."

"How can you say that?"

"I have observed them."  His confident stride took him past the others to a sheer rock ledge.  His gaze swept over the sheep below, then beyond.  "I know where they meet by the Kangal stream at the bottom of the next hill.  I can't catch them of course, but I watch them."

"And what do you see?"

"Something I never expected."  He shook his head, at a loss to describe it.  "Come."

The brindled mastiff led the group to the lopsided, low hill that bordered the water.  Trees lined the banks.  Behind the trees, to the southwest, lay a clearing of tall grass.  It was the sort of hollow in which cheetahs preferred to roam.

The elder dog liked his vantage point.  He could see the sheep, although they were not as close as he usually preferred, and he could see a lone cheetah.  It could see him, too.  Its gaze swept up to where the three dogs lie.  Nevertheless, the lowly predator strode forward into the clearing.  By the edge nearest the water, it lay down.  There, it waited as the dogs did.  Another cheetah arrived, this one from the north.  Then another came.

"We are observed," said the last of the cheetahs.  She gazed up at the dogs.

"They are welcome," said the leader.  He raised his voice.  "Karabash dogs, today we are contemplating the impermanence of all things as represented by our departed grandmother, 'Runs Like the Kangal Stream.'"

"Where is she?" called the elder before he could think.

"She drove away a bear to protect her cubs.  So here we are, alive.  But she died of her wounds.  So here we are, trying to achieve a level of wisdom without her."

The youngest karabash dog snorted.  The elder turned and barked at him.  Startled, the other dog drew back.

After a moment, the elder mastiff made his decision.  He ventured downslope.

"I believe we shall sit in the back, guru of the cheetahs."

The cheetah closed his eyes and waited for the elder dog.

He allowed himself respect and curiosity for this enemy, especially for his enemy's grandmother.  He might have liked to meet her.  He felt a presence by his side.  It was his brindle-coated son.  The fellow stayed silent.  But he carried, still, the lingering scent of bloody victory.  He had calmness, focus, and certainty of purpose.  It occurred to the elder that his brindle-coated son had been right.  He hadn't wavered in his determination about the cheetahs.  In that, he was like his mother.

The youngest caught up to them both.

"How can you tolerate this?" he growled.  "How can you sit so near?  They are lowest of the low.  They have no souls.  You've said before that we have nothing in common with them."

"We have one thing.  It's more than I thought.  Don't let your prejudice blind you."  He interposed his body between the young one and the cheetahs.  He lay down in the manner of the guru.  "And don't worry about their souls.  Sit still now and pay attention to your own."

Not Zen 127: Governance

c. Pakkin Leung via Wikimedia Commons

Governance

"How could this have happened?" the mother of one child asked the school principal. She wiped her face with a napkin.

The fight had occurred over a ball, as many small incidents had before. A girl on one team kicked a red ball out of the field of play. In the shouting and confusion, no one on the other team ran to pick it up. A different group of children grabbed it. They didn't look at the game going on. They began throwing the ball to one another. At that point, a boy on the fielding team ran up to take it away.

The boy holding the ball refused to give it up. The two contestants wrestled over it. They shouted. All the children in the area began yelling at others or calling for help.

It was the kind of playground scuffle that usually got broken up by teachers. However, the teachers in the school had recently been forbidden to intervene. They didn't pull the boys apart. Instead, due to what seemed to be a fortunate circumstance, they requested police assistance.

The two police officers were visiting the building to give a talk. One of them got the call to action when a teacher rushed into his room, shouted there was a 'terrible fight' on the playground and that he was needed. The officer, as he'd been trained to do, put in a call to his backup before he went to assist.

When he arrived on the playground, he was surprised to find the fight still going on. A minute had passed and he was aware that even a minute is a long time for a tussle between children. He was more surprised when he reached out to the boys rolling on the ground. They were big for their age, the size of small adults, and strong. They knocked him off of his feet.

That was when the second officer arrived on the scene.

The accounts of the witnesses differed wildly at this point. But even the police agreed that this was when they responded as if the children were adults. First, they each tackled a combatant. One of the boys grabbed at the female officer's weapons. The officer used a stick to beat him back. Both boys tried to defend themselves from the police sticks. Both were beaten further and a teacher who tried to intervene received a head wound from the second officer. The children were further beaten, handcuffed, and arrested. The police filed charges against them for assault, battery, and resisting arrest.

Although the children were taken to a hospital along with the wounded teacher, armed guards accompanied them. When the parents went to see their children, they were turned away by the guards and told to see the school principal, who had recently arrived.

"They're children," insisted the parents to the principal. "They're not adults. Children."

"They've been charged as adults."

"How is that even possible? It's simply not true. How are they allowed to suddenly decide that our children are grown up when no one else has?"

The mother of the larger of the two boys pointed out that he was mentally challenged and normally gentle. He had never been involved in a playground incident before.

That evening, pictures of the beaten children appeared in the news. Within an hour, the guards were called back to the police station. Nurses admitted the parents to their children's rooms. The next day, charges were dropped. Instead of talking about how wrong the teachers and children had behaved, the police spokesman at a press conference said the department would focus on what the officers had done wrong.

The larger child had been admitted unconscious. He remained in that state due, doctors stated, to head trauma. Two days later, he died in his hospital bed with his mother by his side.

She and the principal returned to the hospital several times to visit the remaining, recovering boy and his parents. They were surprised to overhear, over a news broadcast on the hospital television, that a source within the police department said the officers in the school child beating had done nothing wrong. The investigation of the incident had been conducted quickly and would soon exonerate both officers.

The parents and principal asked to speak to someone from the department. It took two days but the Deputy Chief of Police agreed to come to the hospital for a talk. He admitted to them that the news leak was correct. The investigation had found nothing against the officers.

"They've done nothing wrong? Nothing? They killed my boy."

"They acted as they were trained to do."

"They used deadly force against unarmed children."

"That's unfortunate. We'll change our training to prevent this sort of tragedy. But again, they did as they were trained."

"Then the whole department should be punished."

"How?" The Deputy Chief chuckled. He glanced at their faces and took a deep breath. "That isn't practical. There's no way to punish the police department without hurting public safety."

As she shook her head and fell into tears, the school principal spoke up.

"We punish schools when they perform poorly. Why don't we do it to other public departments?"

"How, smart guy? Shut down police stations?"

"We could do that as easily as we shut down schools. Why not? But there's another way. You could do it personally. You could de-fund the job pleasantries. Take away the department coffee machines or your rewards program. Withhold the fanciest equipment from your new fitness center. Take out the music player."

The Deputy Chief started to say something but he paused.

"That sounds good to me," said the father of the recovering boy. "We should strip away the luxuries for law enforcement organizations when they misuse their force. Give it back later as they improve."

"But …"

"Just as an individual is punished for misusing martial arts and hurting others," the principal continued, "a law enforcement organization should be punished for misusing force."

Not Zen 126: Cooperation

Three former teammates seated themselves for lunch. Each set down a plastic tray on the black tabletop. One placed a stack of napkins in the center for all to use. Another tossed in flatware. This wasn't the fanciest place or the best food, they all agreed, but it was quick. The restaurant was no more than a five minute walk from any of their offices. It had become their place to meet.

"Good to see you guys," said the woman. She unwrapped three straws and popped them into their drinks, each in turn, hers last. 
 
"Whoops. I forgot to grab condiments," said the fellow who usually had that job. He stretched over to a nearby, empty table and swept off the salt and pepper shakers.

"Are we getting lazy?" the first man asked, the one who had brought napkins. "We've let more than a month go by without talking."

Two years ago, they had worked together for a large company. Each had left for a better offer in a smaller company. Now they headed technical service teams. As leaders, they kept busier than they'd been before. But they kept in touch.

It didn't take long for them to trade shop talk about how they were doing, the advances in technologies, the contracts they'd won and lost, projects they'd barely gotten done, and other projects in which they'd succeeded beyond what they'd dreamed.

"It's no secret that the government is putting out a combined contract," said one fellow as he picked up a napkin he'd brought. He wiped his mouth.

"Yeah, everyone in the business has been reading the request for proposal," his friend agreed. He cut another piece from his steak. "That's the biggest contract of the year so far. We're bidding on it, of course. I'm in charge of our proposal team."

"Some of the industry giants are going to compete." The woman took a sip from her glass. "They mentioned it to me last week. It's big enough to attract them. They're putting together bids."

"Ugh." The fellow who'd brought it up set down his food. "That means none of our companies stand a chance."

"Speak for yourself." Next to him, his former teammate chewed on his steak. He folded his arms and leaned back before he paused to conclude, "We'll underbid everyone."

The other two stared at him for a moment. They glanced to each other, then down to their lunch plates.

"You can try," the first fellow ventured after a moment. "But do you meet all of the requirements? My company is a few positions short, I think, or we have to send a couple of our folks to get certified in skills we don't have on board. I wouldn't mind us teaming up on a joint proposal."

"Are you crazy?" His friend opened his mouth in a burst of laughter. His teeth gleamed. "Why would I team up with you? We're competitors."

"Yeah, but we could team up to compete against the bigger companies."

"But then I couldn't win the contract for my company, could I? Even in your best case scenario, we'd have to share the spoils. The benefits of winning wouldn't come totally to me."

"That's right." Slowly, he nodded. "That's partnership, I guess."

They ate in silence for half a minute. The fellow responsible for condiments got up to get sauces he'd forgotten. At that moment, the woman turned to her remaining companion.

"Is that offer you made to him open to my company too?"

"Of course. You're at such a high-end company, I didn't think you'd be interested. I should have asked you first, shouldn't I?" He shook his head and scowled at himself. 

"There are eight expertise areas listed in the contract," she said. "It occurs to me that your company has the best expertise in two areas. You really do. We're a leader in three of them, I'd say. And by that I mean we're better than even the big companies. You know it's true."

"Yeah, although the big ones are pretty strong at everything."

"But not they're not best. They won't be better than us combined for this bid."

"The government might not trust an offer that doesn't come from a big company." He sighed.

"Maybe. But we can have the best qualified bid. That's something." Her eyes lit with excitement. "Even if we lose, the agency will see our expertise levels. They'll probably ask one of the big companies to outsource work to us. After all, we're leaders in key areas."

"Yeah, even a loss could be a win." He had to acknowledge that everything she said was right. "Are you up for a working lunch on this tomorrow?"

"I'll draft a bid to review."

A month later, when the proposal deadline arrived, it turned out that the company with the lowest bid was deemed under-qualified. They did not show the proper areas of expertise. Their proposal was dismissed in the first step of the evaluation process. In contrast, the combined effort of the two smaller companies won the contract. Their proposal survived even a challenge from the bigger companies and a rebidding process.

As the contract was awarded, the executive who had lost his bid received a demotion.

"You were a fine engineer," his boss said as they walked from his former office to his new desk. "But you don't seem ready for an executive position. You're not the competitor we're looking for."

"I'm more competitive than anyone!" he complained.

"Really." His boss eyed him skeptically. "Then why didn't you get us on the winning team?"

Not Zen 125: Thoughtless Competition

"You nurture these plants as if they were children." She did not say this with approval. 

He nodded. As her neighbor, he had known her for fifteen years. He was sympathetic to how she'd recently gone through divorce. Her tone was often hostile for no apparent reason but he didn't mind. He could see that she was trying to be social, to make small talk, and to break out of her old habit of keeping to herself.

His garden lay a few feet inside the gate to his back yard. Anyone passing by could see him. He'd left the latch of the gate open as an invitation. She was the first neighbor to drop in.

In his cultivated plot, the center consisted of his food plants: corn, tomatoes, melons, and beans. He'd surrounded them with spice plants that the local rodents didn't like to eat. It seemed to keep them away fairly well, although it had taken years of trial and error to find spices they really didn't like.

He surrounded the garden with a border of flowers and butterfly bushes since the neighbors seemed to like seeing those.

"I do nurture," he agreed. "Except when I am harsh and cull the plants."

She laughed.

"All things cooperate and compete." With a gesture, his hand trowel swept the air over the garden. "Mostly, different species compete."

"Plants just grow. They are innocent. It's not real competition at all."

He frowned. "When a person doesn't realize that all things compete, I would hope it's because they are removed from nature."

"Why would you hope that?"

"Because otherwise it would mean that the person was in a position to see how life is and yet deny it." 

Last weekend, she had also come to visit, and she'd sat in the grass for a talk. She seemed to regard him as a refuge from her social strife. The woman's husband had grown critical of her habits near the end of their relationship. Her mother and her sisters had always been harsh, even more than her husband had been. Perhaps she was comfortable with being reprimanded, too, because he noticed that his gentle rebuke made her shoulders relax. She folded her arms and leaned back in thought.

"I don't see plants as having rivalries," she finally said, "if you know what I mean."

"I do know what you mean. But when I look around, I see that plants, animals, and people are not so different. We are all social. We cooperate and compete. Even solitary animals, creatures who travel alone for much of their lives, are interdependent with others."

"Now that everyone's gone from my home, I get out a little and I see that." Her husband had left her the house. That had seemed to her like a great blessing at first. But her children had also decided they wanted to leave. Now they stayed with their father in an apartment on the other side of town while she roamed around her four-bedroom house on her own.

"If you stay out more, you'll notice more." He liked the idea of her getting outside. He was sure that she would discover the park, the pond, the public pool, and her other neighbors, the ones she'd never talked to before. She could witness more of everyone else's joys and struggles in life. "Herbivores eat meat sometimes and carnivores eat plants. Every day, I see that plants battle underground, consume one another at the roots, and even eat animals."

"I've never noticed any of that. Plants are dumb, to me. No brains."

"There's a fight going on right now between some plants. It has a clear winner and loser. Come."

He walked her across the grass. The woods brushed against the western border of his yard. There, he found the scene to illustrate his point. A half-dozen kinds of vines grew at the border with the great trees. Two kinds of them he let flourish because they fed him, the blackberries and the raspberries.

"See how the raspberry vine tries to flee the blackberries?" he said. In this thicket, the blackberries had strangled out everything else. No flower or weed had withstood the snarl of spiked stems and leaves. The raspberry bush had, in reaction, stretched out tendrils along the treeline. "It has lost the competition. But even though it is rooted to the ground, a vine like this can try to escape. Not all plants have that option. They stay and fight or, if they feel they are outmatched, they make babies fast before the oak tree growing above them crowds out the light and eats up the water."
She studied the vines for a while, arms crossed. Tears began to well up in her eyes.

"Poor dumb bush," she said. "I didn't realize I was in a competition either."

"Yes. I never knew your family well but I've seen you on occasion for years. I talked with your husband. I would say that he, too, didn't understand that competition always goes on. It's the nature of life."

"We were lazy together. Isn't that how it's supposed to be?"

"Perhaps. But social cooperation and rivalries go on all the time. They never stop, not even if you pretend they do. The precursors to life act this way, so even our chemicals are like this. Our partnerships are helped, I think, by recognizing the need to cooperate and compete."

"Sounds like vigilance. I thought that didn't apply to me, not with his attitude." She turned away from the scene with the competing vines. Her right arm swept out to indicate his house. "Your wife keeps herself beautiful. How come you don't get jealous? How come you don't have attitude? If I dressed nice or lost weight, my husband always got a jealous."

"Jealousy is a form of possessiveness. I think maybe it comes from a concern that we haven't kept an eye on cooperation and competition." He looked to his home. His wife, working at the kitchen table, noticed. She waved, smiled, and returned to her work before he could wave back. "There's more involved, too, but I think jealousy is sometimes a leap to hyper-vigilance spurred by the recognition that we haven't been paying attention."

"Attention to what?"

"To other people. To important relationships. To the rest of world. Everything."

"Paying that much attention sounds exhausting."

"If you keep an eye on how things really are, it's not too hard. If you stop observing and re-start, then I suppose each re-start could seem tedious. It would be like the way our seldom-used muscles grow tired fast."

"No," she said after a while. "I think you're wrong. Competition doesn't go on all the time. It can't."

He sighed. He turned around and pointed at the vines they'd left at the edge of the woods.

"Do these plants know they are in competition?" he asked.

"I doubt it."

"Maybe not. As you say, they might not be aware. But they're in competition regardless. All of us are, always, even if when competition is hidden from our view or even when we try to hide ourselves from it."

Not Zen 124: Good and Evil

"I've heard that you teach an understanding that goes beyond good and evil," said a visitor to the meditation class.  "So you ignore morality altogether.  You teach novices this powerful way of life even if they are cruel.  I hope you'll say it isn't true.  Why should evil people benefit from your instruction?"

The meditation teacher stood and rapped this visitor on the head.  The visitor was not hurt but he covered his head, shocked by the blow.  He rose to his feet.  As he turned to leave, the students pleaded with him to stay.  They tried to explain that this was a traditional way of unasking a wrong question.

"Why are you preoccupied with good and evil?" the teacher asked him.  "Maybe you should stay.  You should listen and learn what you can."

But the visitor was in no mood to learn.  After the first meditation session, he approached other students about preventing evil people from attending the class.  After the next session, he asked others about sins they may have committed.  After the last session, he asked about past actions that students had regretted.

The visitor returned to the next week's session.  He didn't approach the teacher.  Instead, he whispered to other students about the power of meditation.  It was a gift, he said, and should not be given to the violent or the criminally minded.  The teacher endured hearing this during the breaks.  But before the last meditation session, he announced that he would give a lecture.

"I hear students worrying,” he allowed with a nod.  “I know some of you fear that evil people will learn of our practice and gain power from it.  I find it necessary to dispel this fear.

"First, I ask, 'What is an evil person?'  Is he one who sees to kill his brother or rob him?  If so, why would this person seek to understand the way of all things, the flow of life, the illusion of the self, the immediacy of animal love in every breath?  Such an understanding would only get in the way of  murder.

"Secondly, I say, 'What good is it to call a person evil?'  Would you not stop a good person from committing an evil act?  If you saw a bad person doing a good deed, would you stop him?

"Knowing justice from injustice is a easy thing.  Children know it.  There is no need to teach it here.  Our meditations do not ignore morality but our studies do not focus on it.  When I became the group leader, I assumed you at least had the understanding of children."

After this lecture, the teacher hit himself on the head.

Not Zen 123: Army of Generals

“Your article takes an intellectual stance again.” She tossed down the magazine. Her fingers wrapped around her coffee cup.  “All of your stuff is too hard to think about, no mass appeal.”

“That's okay.” He nodded in acknowledgement of her point. “For now, it might seem that way. Soon it won't.”

“People aren't getting smarter.” She glanced around at the customers in the coffee shop. A couple of men argued about sports. Another dozed in his chair. A group of young women pointed at other women leaving the shop.

“No, but we are getting more educated.” His eyes stayed on his editor. “Consider this. Reading and writing were once regarded as technical skills. Some people could figure them out. Some couldn't. Those who could learn were said to be intellectuals, servants to the upper class or better. Now most people can read and write. It's not intellectual.”

“Pfah.” She waved away the example. “We're literate now. That's not a trend.”

“But it is. The trend isn't limited to literacy. Think about what armies were like a hundred and fifty years ago.” He pointed to a pair of flags, reminders of the civil war. “There were no professional soldiers in our country. When war broke out, men volunteered and brought the guns they had. If you wanted to be an officer, you recruited your own troops, supplied them with weapons and maybe with horses. That's what it took to be an officer. There was no training. There was no reading Clausewitz's 'On War' or the 'Book of Five Rings' or anything like that.”

“Those were terrible officers.” She scowled at the flags.

“Some of them.” He had to agree. A moment later, he shrugged. “Death separated the brave and stupid from the bold and clever. Teddy Roosevelt was an officer who got his start that way.”

“Really?”

“He had no formal training, only a good sense of timing. Nowadays, even the lowest soldier has more military skill than our former commander in chief.  They know more battlefield tactics than the greatest generals of history. If any of the old officers were brought into these times, they would say that we have an army of generals.”

“My brother was in the army. I know you're right about their cross training. It seems to work. Everyone knows to stick to their roles but they can take on other duties as needed. Soldiers can act as officers in an emergency. And do it competently.”

“So I'm passionate about things that seem intellectual to you right now. But these things won't seem intellectual in time. They're going to seem as obvious as reading and writing. Already, meditation is trendy like 'The Book of Five Rings' was a while ago.”

She sighed. “One type of meditation gets more popular than the others and drives them out. That's not progress. Plus business folks use their meditation to achieve clarity of mind and put it to immoral uses.”

“See? You're passionate about an intellectual issue. You have opinions about it.”

“Everyone else is adopting a different, easier style than you use.” She put down her cup.  “How can I tell that you're addressing topics of interest to the next, better educated generation?”

“Education will improve us all.”

“I doubt it.” She leaned back. Her arms crossed in her lap.

“In time, the army of generals will sweep all others from the field.” He smiled and gestured to the winning flag. “How can the battle end any other way?”

Not Zen 122: The Reminder

"This young man has done more than his part," he school headmaster announced from his podium.

He had called the families of his school together to witness the signing of oaths.  Each school in the agreement pledged that its students would not take part in the violence.

Their city had been divided along ethnic lines for as long as anyone could remember.  For years, each group had lived in peace, side by side with culturally unfamiliar neighbors.  Sometimes, though, a person from one group offended another.  When it came to a fight over such incidents, people swiftly sided with their own ethnic group.  The incidents escalated.  Responses to insults became injuries.  Responses to injuries became murders.  Murders grew into wars.

In the midst of such a war, a boy in a religious school reached out to the children of other religious schools.  He wrote letters asking them to establish peace among the student populations.  As he was a student leader, he wrote to the other student leaders, such as they were.  One or two wrote back.  They wrote to friends in other schools.  In a few months, the movement spread.

"It may seem like a small thing," the headmaster continued.  "But sometimes peace begins like this.  We are planting a seed of peace here and we hope it will grow."

He spoke for a while about the boy, his campaign for peace, and the promising results.  He hailed the lad as his best student, his most enlightened leader.  He gestured to the boy's family among those in attendance.

"He began this campaign when he was personally free of the violence.  He acted solely out of concern for others.  But one of his grandfathers was killed soon after.  That did not stop him.  He did not fail to reach out.  In fact, he pressed even harder with the families of the men accused of the murder.  He brought them into his peace process.  Such greatness of spirit should not go unrewarded."

The headmaster presented his student with a certificate and a signed copy of the multiple-school pledge to stay peaceful.  Local news services took their picture.  The talked to the boy for a while and asked him questions about establishing a general peace, none of which he could answer.  They seemed disappointed.

After the reporters left, his extended family approached him.  This included his grandparents, who had mixed feelings about the call for peace.

"Your other grandpa wasn't the only one in our family to die," complained the surviving grandfather.  "That first boy you reached out to, his cousin murdered your uncle, my son-in-law.  How can you say that you love him?"

"First, it wasn't him," the student answered, award still clutched in his hands.  "He hates what his cousin did.  He would never commit such a horrible act and for that, it's easy to love him.  He wants peace.  Like me.  For another thing, I wouldn't hate even his cousin if his cousin renounced the murder."

"Only if he renounced the murder?" said his oldest grandmother.  She was the wife of his dead grandfather, who had been a kind man and had played chess with members of all religious groups, a fact that apparently had made him a target.  When three young men had been arrested for the act, she met them at the police station.  She recognized their faces.  After a brief conversation, she told them that she forgave them.  They had been unrepentant until then but one broke into tears at her sincere forgiveness.

"Just for saying those words?" said the boy's other grandmother, the loud one.  "That's too easy to do."

The boy didn't quite hear his grandmothers.  His grandfather stood in front of him, so he addressed the man again.

"I remind myself every day to hate the faults of others, not the people," he said.  "We can love others and not their moral flaws."

"What a nice sentiment," proclaimed one grandmother for all to hear.  "No wonder they are calling you a prodigy of wisdom."

"How sad for you," said the gentle one.  She patted the boy on his cheek.  "To need such a reminder."

Not Zen 121: Heartbreak

A young man left home to attend school. When he returned one evening, he declared at the door that his heart was broken and he could love no more. The family sat down to dinner. He ate enough to be polite although the stingy amounts brought comments from his mother. After the meal, he and other men of the family strolled out to the garden. They allowed a few toddlers to follow. The young man set out a stool so his grandfather could sit. He accepted none for himself. The men, as a group, talked and pulled weeds. 

He spent a long while in silence. His brothers and uncles told stories and laughed. When he turned to his father, everyone hushed to listen.

"Did you love any women before our mom?" he asked his father. "Enough to marry them, I mean."

His father had been silent, too. He glanced to the assembled brothers and uncles.

"A few." He allowed himself a gentle smile.

"Did they love you back?" 

"Not always." This brought a scowl to his face but a grin to one of the uncles.

"How did you stand it?"

"Ah." His father pulled up two more weeds. His mouth opened. But he shut it and weeded some more around his feet. "It seems to me that you loved this young woman at your school enough to marry her. But she did not love you the same."

"She didn't." The young man's fingers searched for weeds but his father had picked the ground between them clear.

"I know that there are many women who love you." His father tossed the grassy remains into the bucket next to his right foot. "I see them look at you every time you visit."

"But I do not love them the same."

"Then reach out to others or simply to anyone." The father sighed. "You will learn. You learned to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to work by working. It should come as no surprise that you learn to love by loving."

The other men had been listening. They nodded. One of the uncles grunted. But the young man's grandfather stopped weeding. He threw down the tangle of roots he'd been holding and pressed himself upright on his stool. He studied his son and grandson for a moment.

"That's reassuring advice." His gaze narrowed. "It sounds almost right. Your youngest son will get better at loving if he approaches it as something to practice. Who can doubt that? Right?"

"Right," said one of the uncles. Everyone nodded but the young man's father.

"Tell me," continued the grandfather, "how did your son learn to breathe?"

"By being born." The father raised an eyebrow. 

"That's how loving happens." The old fellow turned to his grandson. "Don't fool yourself, kid. You never stopped loving your mom, your dad, this girl you're talking about, or anyone. And you're never going to."

"Never?"

"Never. Get used to it."