Not Zen 47: Obvious Winner

On the hottest day of the summer, a swarm of sea lions arrived in the bay. They hadn't ventured this far north before but once they'd made themselves at home it didn't take long for them to discover the otters.

Great colonies of sea otters swarmed together in five rafts of hundreds of members each. The two larger rafts were mostly females.  The three smaller rafts consisted of males of various prestige, strength, and distance from the females. All of the otters, to their dismay, discovered that their large groups provided them no defense from the sea lions. They were easy prey.

Every day for weeks, the great predators swam up to the edges of the colonies and dragged otters to their deaths. Finally, a large contingent of otters decided they would prefer to swim north to the next bay rather than wait to be eaten by sea lions. The elders among them knew that the trip north would cross a hard stretch of ocean where they would be victims of shark attacks, hunts by orcas, and tests with other dangerous animals. Only the toughest otters would survive.

"Should we permit pups to travel?" asked one of the leaders.

"How can we not?" said an elder. "What else would they do?  Stay here to be eaten?"

"Only the best can make it." She nodded to a new male. He was large and tough for his age. "Not all of them, either, just a few like this."

"You're wrong about that one," said the elder. "He fights with his playmates."

"He wins."

"No, he simply doesn't learn. It's otters like that one, over there, who will be with us in the end."

She gestured to a young, ordinary male. But the leader could see no difference between him and many other undersized children.

"I can't imagine why you think that," she snorted.

The long journey began the next day. Most of the otters survived the swim into the open ocean. Sharks took their share of the travelers but not in great numbers. The real hardship was the lack of food. There were few shellfish to be had even near the coast. Pups suffered the worst. They could not dive to the depths for crabs or other suitable game. They were reduced to scavenging beaches for the tiniest of mussels. In desperation, they began eating the sea urchins available.

To get at the sea urchins, the pups had to learn to bite through the undersides, where the spines were shortest. They had to deal with rays and starfish along the shore, too, competitors for the soft contents inside the urchins' protective, poisonous shells. Many pups starved, fell sick from the urchins, or dropped behind when they'd grown too weak to continue.

At last, the pilgrimage reached its destination. The lead otters discovered a bay with no kelp forest but with sufficient food to survive. By that time, only a dozen pups were left.

"You see," said the elder to the lead female. "The pup you thought was too small and ordinary is still with us."

"I don't know why," said the leader. "The strong one went missing, too. How did you know?"

"Bigger and stronger and smarter are good. When a battle is otherwise equal, an advantage in one area determines the winner. But battles are never equal. And this was not a short struggle. This was a long one."

"So how did you know that ordinary-seeming fellow would win?"

"I could see that it never occurred to him to stop trying.  When others failed, they sulked. He failed, revised his approach, and tried again. He had many quick failures and kept improving."

"That's all?"

"It served him well when others starved.  Here is something that may seem odd to you because you are young.  Winners in any contest are not usually the best. Instead, they are the ones who learn the most from their failures. Over time, that is how all of life is won."

Not Zen 46: Mutual Dependence

A school teacher sat behind his desk in the warm, afternoon sun. His students had left for the day.

"Sit in any chair, roshi," said the teacher to the elderly woman who entered. She was the matron who had once shown him the ways of Daoism and Zen. He rose and bowed his head to her.

His former mentor did not often have the chance to visit. Her health was bad. Even when she could make it to the school, she usually spent considerable time criticizing the way things were done in her absence.

She eyed the classroom furnishings and remained standing. Her right hand leaned heavily on the knob of her cane.

"Who made this chair?" she asked suspiciously. She banged the closest one with her stick.

"You did."

"Did I?" There was a twinkle in her eye. She seemed pleased. "Is this a trick? I was never a carpenter. Don't you think I would remember?"

"But you do remember, roshi. You are not so old as that. You recall that things derive their nature by mutual dependence. They are nothing by themselves. A wooden shape without anyone to sit in it is nothing."

"So I made the chair?"

"By your need, you did. Absolutely."

"This body is tired." Gratefully, she lowered herself into the seat. "I'm glad to make a chair for it."

Not Zen 45: Accepting Promotion

In the woodlands, near a ridgeline, lived a grey wolf. She was the spiritual leader of her pack. Over the years, she had promoted two male wolves in their turns to the role of hunt leader. Now, with the current hunt leader injured by an elk, she deemed it time again to decide on the right male.

It was a cold morning and her breath, warm from the recent meal, billowed as she walked and surveyed the pack. Two of her males were not fully grown and to her mind not eligible. Others weren't strong enough. One was particularly unkempt. That left her four good candidates to inspect.

She made her way to the strongest male, a smooth-furred fellow who had striven for years to take the lead role. He had fought a bit too often with the old hunt leader but he also knew when to back down. He had never been hurt in a fight or in a hunt. He was usually second or third to the food. He didn't share with the cubs, which was unfortunate, but on the other hand he rarely tormented them.

“Perhaps your time has come,” she said as she drew nose-to-nose with him.  “The pack needs someone in front. Can you lead?”

“Oh, mistress,” he simpered, full of false modesty. He sat back and cleaned his paws for a moment as he considered his reply. “I am not worthy of such a promotion.”

“Right,” she said. She tried to picture him doing the extra work. It was hard.  He had never taken a serious risk. Could she let the pack endure a leader who hesitated to accept her offer? “Never mind. I'll find someone ready.”

She turned to her left and went off to the next male.

Not Zen 44: You're Perfect

"Roshi, are you enlightened?" the student questioned her teacher as he sat in contemplation before class.

"You've come a long way in your studies," said the roshi. He put down his book. "You know, of course, that I am supposed to say 'mu' and undo that question. For you, however, because I think you will understand, I say yes. All people can reach enlightenment in their lifetimes and they should. It is not so hard. Just try and don't try."

The student was not excited by this idea because she had long suspected this was the case. Also, she had observed the calmness and loving manner of her guru towards everyone in all situations. She saw him try and not try, both together, in every moment.

"I know that you let go of desires," she said. "It's obvious. But what did that feel like? What happened after you did that?"

The guru closed his eyes for a moment.

"It was a morning years ago when I let go of all my desires. Of course, it came after a few years of practicing and contemplating the nature of those desires. I tested letting them go. Then I let them go."

The student closed her eyes.

"A friend approached me as I sat," continued the roshi, "much as I sit now. I felt no separation between him and myself. We were aspects of the same, whole being. We were part of existence. I smiled at my friend and he studied me for a moment. Then he acted as he always did. We parted with a joke and a laugh. We were completely as we should be."

The student smiled. She found herself studying the smile of her teacher.

“Later that day, I met my lover and felt the same lack of separation. She and I were part of the whole of existence, exactly as we should be, and my emotions were as pure and unstained by argument or jealousy as if I were made of fresh snow. My love for her was clear. The world was fresh. It is always fresh, of course, but I did not always realize it, and did not always accept its beauty.”

“Am I as I should be?” asked the student.

“You are perfect,” said the roshi.

Not Zen 43: Contempt Needed

Before dawn, an elderly man hiked up the hill to a grand temple. He arrived when the front doors were closed. As the eastern sky glowed red, he was joined by a younger man. They waited until the priest noticed them and opened the temple.

They were the earliest visitors of the day and it was their first time inside. Tall, stone statues lined the front hall. Carpets with woven mandalas stretched out along the marble floor. Under the arch at the center of the temple, artists had painted a fresco of bright colors and intricate details. The younger man lifted his gaze as he followed his companion. He saw candle holders of brass, gold, and silver. He gaped at altars piled high with jade figurines, carved with love. Next to them and among them were icons made from citrine and aquamarine.

The older fellow stepped up to the raised platform at the center, where the prayer mats waited. He brushed aside the incense burners, books, and carvings that lay in his path. His companion gasped.

"Do you have something to say?" he asked.

"No, sir," the younger one said.

"Of course not. You are very respectful."

"Yes." said the pupil.

"Everything I say, you hear."

"Oh yes."

"You are so reverent, so serious ..."  The old man paused. He rubbed his balding head. "I cannot see how you will ever succeed."

"But … what do you mean?"

"You see me as above you. You see enlightenment as beyond you." He threw out his arms to either side and indicated their surroundings. "You see all this crap in the temple as worthy of reverence. It's not. Enlightenment is mundane. I'm an ordinary person. Have some contempt, damn it."

"Yes, sir."

"Sheesh. Listen to you." He pounded the floor. "If the holiest person alive was here on the mat next to me, I would tell you to doubt the words coming out of his mouth."

"Yes, sir."

"Damn it!"

Not Zen 42: The Power of Natural

There was a semi-professional fighter and religious disciple who earned money by demonstrating his physical strength. Sometimes he found other promising fighters, strong men, or students of the Way to refer to instructors.

In one town, the fighter came across a farmer's truck stuck in a ditch. To show off his strength, he volunteered to lift the truck but, try as he might, he couldn't gain purchase on the muddy ground.

"I'm hauling bricks," said the farmer. "It might be too heavy."

"You're right." The warrior sighed and gave up. "I'm one of the strongest men in the world and I can't lift it in this mud. But I can walk a block to the trucking station and get someone to tow you out."

When the strong man returned, he was surprised to find the small truck already out of the ditch.

"How did you do it?" he asked the farmer in astonishment.

"Oh, Billy Joe lifted me out." The farmer hopped into his truck and started the engine. "Mighty Billy, we call him here. But you just missed him."

"I want to meet that man."

He followed in the direction Billy had gone. Only a block away, he met a woman who told him that Mighty Billy was in the garage. At the garage he asked a young man and was told, "Mighty Billy's in the shed."

Out at the shed, there was only a small man, nearly bald and gray with age. The warrior told the man that he was looking for Mighty Billy.

"Why do you want Mighty Billy?" the man asked.

"Because I know he lifted that truck. I want to learn how he did it."

"I'm Billy," admitted the man.

"You?" The warrior could hardly believe it. The man in front of him seemed strong but he was also smaller and thinner than most ordinary men. He could never be a prize fighter.

"I know what you're thinking," said Billy. "But when I raised that truck out of the ditch, it's because I knew how to use my strength. I wasn't showing off. I was just listening to my body and doing things in a natural way."

Not Zen 41: Better Than Finding

A man wanted his car repaired. He went to a dealership but the mechanics there said it was impossible for them to perform the correct procedure.

"Why?" he cried.

"They aren't making the flanges you need. We can't get them."

He took his car to a local garage, which told him the same thing. He went to a car hobbyist, who agreed that those parts hadn't been manufactured for years. However, the hobbyist said that he shouldn't give up hope. There was a junkyard owner not far away who might be able to locate the correct parts.

"That's not an antique, you know," said the junkyard owner when they met. He puffed his cigar and nodded in the direction of the well-used vehicle.

"I've had my car a long time," he replied. "I trust it and I want to fix it."

"Is this the parts list?" A greasy finger trailed down the page printed out from the dealer.

"Yes, it is."

"Okay. Come back in the morning. I'll have them for you."

He shook the owner's hand and vowed to pay anything. Later, as he stayed over night in a hotel, he regretted his enthusiasm. He worried that he would face a huge charge for such rare parts.

In the morning, however, he was surprised to find the bag of parts ready and a small bill attached. The price was less than a tenth of what he'd expected.

"This is wonderful!" he exclaimed. "But how did you find them so quickly? And why couldn't anybody else find the parts? I had all sorts of specialists looking for me. Some charged more money than you did and without giving me any results. What are you doing right?"

"I made the parts," the junkyard owner explained. He wiped the grease from his hands. "I had to charge for my time but otherwise, they're not worth much."

Not Zen 40: Excuses

The mice held court. In their grand hollow between two great oak trees, they thronged to hear accusations against two members of their clan. A pair of defendants had been caught with willow bark in their burrows. Chewing too much of the bark made mice light-headed and unreliable so it had been outlawed. Now the elders gathered to determine the facts and, if the defendants were found guilty, decide whether they should be torn apart or merely banished.

The guard mice who had discovered the caches of willow bark testified first. There seemed to be no doubts. Both of the accused had been caught with willow not only in their nesting chambers but in their mouths. Indeed, when the initial testimony was finished one of the defendants crept forward to beg for his life.

"I'm not like the other fellow," he pleaded. "I'm sorry for what I've done. I agree with the rule against willow. I'll never even look at it again."

"You let your children go hungry," said one of the elders. "You put a great burden on your mate and on your neighbors."

The defendant trembled. "I didn't notice. My ears were ringing. I'm very sorry."

The most senior, powerful mice conferred for a moment. They agreed that ringing in the ears was a symptom of too much willow bark.

"You step back," they said. "Bring the other one forward."

The second defendant had fought his arrest. His forelimbs and snout bore wounds from the struggle. The guards around him bore bloody wounds, too.

"What do you have to say for yourself?" asked one of the oldest mice in the burrow.

"I have a toothache," said the defendant. "So I'll eat willow bark if I want. It's up to me, not you elders. I didn't let any children go hungry. I kept my side of the stores full. I went on my patrols. I brought back better food than anybody. All I did was eat willow bark. Who cares how much? That's up to me."

His words caused a roar in the cavern as mice gossiped to one another. How could this solitary mouse dare to oppose the will of the majority? A few of the audience tried to shout him down toward the end of his speech.

Angrily, the head judge called a conference of the elders. He wanted to decide on sentences for the defendants right away. The other judges wanted to call character witnesses first. The head judge prevailed, however, shouting down the others. They took a poll among them. It did not produce a unanimous result. Some of the elders voted for clemency, mostly for the apologetic mouse. They polled themselves again and again, sniffing and talking and trying to reach consensus.

By the fourth vote, only one of the judges voted against the sentence levied by the others. However, she was one of the eldest and deemed the wisest despite her frail body. The difficult part for the head judge to understand was that the elder had voted to pardon the rude mouse and execute the contrite one.

"Did you make a mistake, venerable one?" he asked. "I can't help noticing that you may have gotten their names reversed. Did you mean to vote the other way?"

"I'm not so old that I'm confused," she said. "The rest of you should be ashamed for not understanding."

"But you're letting off the unrepentant fellow!"

"Be calm. Think," she replied. "Some of us here remember when willow bark was first made legal. Then it was made illegal again. Our ways change. Our laws change. All that defiant mouse needs is a change in our laws for him to be an upstanding citizen. But the other mouse, the one you like so much, he made excuses. I've heard him before. He did many things wrong and he excused himself from our rules many times and he says he is sorry. Well, I've dealt with his kind of mouse before. He would be a criminal under any laws, in any circumstances."

The other judges looked to one another. They sniffed. They talked. They voted again. All of them changed their verdict except for the one who had gotten it right in the first place. And so the defiant mouse was spared.

Not Zen 39: No Consequence

On a cold night on a windy hillside, a young ewe circled her flock. The guard dog gazed down from the top of the hill. The rest of the sheep huddled together. Most protected themselves from the wind but one ewe kept moving, looking for her child.

Even after she found her lamb a third of the way into the crowd where he had fallen asleep with his playmate, she continued to wander. The guard dog huffed. He got to his feet and trotted down to the ewe.

"There are no predators," he told her. "You can rest now."

"Do you know me?"

"Of course I know you. You are the one who worries a lot."

"Is that how you think of me?" The ewe shuffled.

The dog tilted his head. He waited.

"I keep telling myself to be calm but it doesn't work," said the ewe. "I have to deal with problems all the time. I'm always tense and upset."

"Those problems," said the dog, "must be similar to those of the other sheep. To be calm inside, you should remind yourself of that."

The young ewe shook her head. She contemplated her troublesome lamb, the rams who kept fighting over her and the other ewes, her relatives, seemingly always in trouble. She recalled the wolf who had stalked the herd in the previous year and all of the things that were constantly going wrong in her life. She remembered the things that had gone wrong and she anticipated all of the things likely to go wrong in the future, as well, which seemed to her to be nearly everything.

"I'm not like my sisters, you know," she proclaimed. "My oldest sister is so irresponsible. She mates and bears children without a care. She eats anything, entertains her friends and pleases herself. I'm not like that."

"Is your sister calm?"

"Hah. If you can all it that."

"Close your eyes for a moment. Pretend you are your sister."

"Yes?" The ewe squinted for a moment. She started to peek. Then she saw the dog watching and tried to keep her eyes closed tighter.

"Now imagine your problems as you always do. This time, regard them as if you were your sister."

The young ewe imagined that she was her sister viewing the world. She eyed the rams with contempt. The grasses were hers. Other sheep rumbled about the hillsides without clear goals but they did not affect her. She lived in the moment, without worries. If the wind disturbed her she sidled up inside the flock. If her lamb's bleating annoyed her, she trotted away until she felt better.

"Those problems are of no consequence!" she exclaimed in nearly her sister's voice.

"Yes, I thought that might be the case."

Not Zen 38: The Giving Limit

A doctor in a large city decided to take some cases for no money. At the end of each day, she set two hours aside for her charity work. Many poor people came to take advantage of her gift. Many people who were not poor came as well.

Since the doctor had no way of knowing who lived in poverty and who did not, she was forced to serve everyone. Soon she had more free cases than she could treat in her allotted time. She began to turn customers away, taking patients in order of physical need but leaving many untreated.

One of the customers was a vagrant man who had once been a monk. Although he had a deep sore on his arm, he let others go before him lest they be turned away. For two days, he arrived early but let others go in ahead and was not seen by the doctor. At the end of the third day, he became feverish and found himself unable to leave. The doctor was forced to treat him as her last appointment.

"Why didn't you show me this before?" she asked as she cut the dead flesh from his arm.

"You should know, since you give charity," the vagrant replied.

"Then why come to see me now?"

"Why do you go home?" he said.