Not Zen 56: Universal Reason

A woman offered flight lessons to the elderly clerk of her meeting group. He was eager to learn and arrived early. Together, they ran through the check-down list to make sure their small plane was ready. Then she took them up.

When they reached cruising altitude, she passed the controls to the clerk. His first lesson went well. Near the end, his instructor felt free to bring up things he'd said in church.

"You talked about the the Stoics," she said. "Apparently they believe there's a universal sense of reason. I like that. But at another time you said you believe in the Buddha, too, who told his followers that we create the universe with our thoughts. Those two beliefs are in direct conflict."

"No, there's no conflict." He concentrated hard on keeping a level flight.

"Yes, one of those statements opposes the other."

"No, both are true. Look, will you accept that this plane must obey the laws of gravity?"

"That's what I've been telling you. We don't keep it in the air by thinking Buddha thoughts."

"But that's exactly how we keep it in the air! We do it by thinking. Without the presence of an intelligence to recognize these material things as a plane, there isn't a plane. It doesn't exist without us. We create the 'plane' by recognizing it."

"Without us, there's nothing? Is that what you're saying?"

"Without intelligence in the universe, there could be variances in mass from place to place. But there would be no one to say, 'These masses make an airplane.'"

"Well, I'm telling you it's our understanding of nature that lets us fly."

"Well, I'm agreeing. We have to understand our own nature and think the right thoughts to stay up here."

Not Zen 55: Sweetness

Three golden jackals trotted across a meadow. They had followed the scent of an elk herd. After half an hour of work, they grew excited by the added aroma blood. They picked up speed.

An hour later, they ran past the borders of their territory and pressed closer to a death scent. The stench of it was everywhere. The smaller jackal, daughter to the mates, trailed behind. On her slightly shorter legs, she arrived to their destination last. She was tired and panting. For the first time in her life, blood did not smell good to her. The clearing felt wrong. She scanned the bushes and underbrush. Where were the elk? They had fled.

She caught sight of her parents not far ahead. They huddled together between a hibiscus and a firethorn shrub. Another body lay in that spot with them. As the jackal loped over, she recognized the form as similar to her own. Someone had crawled near the firethorn for shelter. Closer still, she recognized who it was: her mother's sister. 

The creature was her aunt, dying. One of her ribs had been broken and laid bare. The white bone of it trembled in the air. An elk had gored her with its antlers.

"Come," he mother said to her. "Come say goodbye to my sister."

The young jackal did not want to approach. In sadness and in fear, she moved sideways as she crept closer. She sidled east and west but eventually she came to a spot beside her parents but out of view of her dead or dying aunt. She craned her neck to study the body for signs of life. It had moved a little, earlier. Now she understood that it was a corpse. She had seen its last breath.

Area jackals gathered in a large group every year. It was how they found mates and kept traditions. Through their yearly meetings, they maintained a system of mentors and pupils. Her aunt had been her teacher. She had been a wise jackal, able to track any animal, even hares and snakes, and she had been strong, tougher than her mate who had died in a fight the year before. She had occupied a difficult territory and had outlived her only two children.

"Last month, I told her I would play with her later. I never did." She had sworn she would visit more, too, and listen better. She hadn't. She hadn't wanted to spend time around someone older. She'd forgotten her promises until now.

"Sometimes the present moment is too late," said her father.

"How sour this day has turned!" she wailed.

"No!" Her mother touched her, nose to nose, and then she backed up to look at the remains of her sister. "How sweet this day can be. How sweet is every day when you are alive.  Someday, your father and I will be gone. Only you will remember my sister and cherish her. If we have other children, they will carry on our ways. Only you can pass on my sister's spirit."

The young jackal looked to the fallen body. A memory came to her of her aunt in better times, laughing and running. A breeze blew over them. She raised her head and gazed around. She watched a cloud as it sailed across the blue sky. The day appeared beautiful and clear.

Not Zen 54: The Sign Painters

A sign painter and his young apprentice sat one afternoon in a park near the center of town. It was a slow work day. In times like this, the two painters spent hours practicing their craft. They created portraits of people in the park for fun and sometimes for money.

The apprentice set down his brush. He pointed past the willow trees and honeysuckle bushes to where the police barracks stood on the other side of the street from the park.

"Yesterday, the police beat my friend," he said.

"How did that happen?" the old master asked, one eyebrow raised.  He did not put down his brush. He finished adding a gentle line to his ink sketch.

"He was in a fight." The apprentice shook his fists. "He called for the police but instead of helping him, they beat him along with everyone else they arrested. Later, they put him in a cell with the men who had been beating him. So he was beaten further."

"Why were those men hurting him in the first place?" The master set down his brush with care not to disturb the sharp point of its bristles. "To take his money?"

"No, it was over politics."

The master thought about that for a while, hands on his knees.

"So he got into an argument," the master ventured, "one man against many.  Instead of backing down he decided to fight. Is that right?"

"Generally speaking, yes."

"And when the police arrived, they found many men fighting. From their point of view, they ended the fight and threw everyone in jail."

"But he was calling for them. The police are supposed to distinguish right from wrong. Shouldn't they have helped him?"

"Perhaps."

"He said they hit him right away."

"Did he hit them back?"

"Of course."

The master sat and watched the crocuses and honeysuckle plants sway in the breeze.

"Your friend lives, as many people do, with ideas in his head of how the world should work."

"Doesn't everyone?"

"It is has always been my aim, as a painter, to let go of preconceptions. That is because I think it best to draw what is there, not what I think I should see. Art is misleading enough already. Anyway, it is not so very hard to see what is really there. Animals can do it. Do you think a fox would fight a pack of wolves? Would an animal make such a mistake?"

"We are not animals."

"More pity that we do not observe the truth. If your friend avoided assuming the world is other than it is, he would not have thought the police would understand his view immediately. He would have seen them as the ordinary people they are."

"That does not excuse the police."

The master nodded. The sign painters sat side by side for a minute. Breezes shook the trees and the bushes.

After a while, the old man said, "Can you tell me why the cabbage butterfly avoided those flowers?"

"Has it?" asked the student.

"Yes." The older fellow pointed. "Can you see the mantis nearby? It is shaking the leaves as it stalks."

"Ah, now I see. That's a large mantis. But the shaking is hard to see in the wind."

"No, the shaking is different from the wind. In the insect world, I expect it is a loud, obvious thing. Yet the mantis does not care. It is counting on the wind to cover it. And it must be right about the cover, too, because it lives. It eats insects who tell themselves, for a moment, 'oh, the wind is moving the leaves.' They do not see the mantis until it is too late."

They returned to their painting. The student, having nothing better to do, decided to paint the mantis. It stalked among the honeysuckle leaves quite slowly. In each great gust, the mantis lowered all its limbs and clung tight to its perch. In the softer breezes, it moved one limb, then another. It shook the leaves beneath it but the student painter found it hard to tell the difference between the wind and the effect of the mantis even while he looked for it.

A different cabbage butterfly swept in but avoided the flowers near the mantis. It took a few minutes for another insect, a honeybee, to try its luck. As it passed close, the mantis snatched it out of the air. It cut the bee with its claws and began to devour it.

"Ah." The master set his brush down. He placed a stone on his paper to hold it in the winds. "The butterfly, aware of its lack of defenses, observed closely. The honeybee did not."

"Does this have to do with my friend?"

"Your friend did not observe his situation as it was. He got into a fight because he thought being in the right would be an advantage. When he realized it was not, he called for the police. When he should have surrendered to the police, he fought them. Would you have done these things?"

"Maybe. I think he was unlucky. I could get unlucky, too."

"Yes, to those who do not observe the world, awareness seems like luck."

Not Zen 53: On the Way

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On the Way

Many pilgrims travelled together on an old bus. They were on their way to build homes for the victims of a disaster. Among the travellers were two friends, one a student of the Way, another a student of Zen.

"How can you say everything is not an illusion?" asked the Zen devotee, arms around her knees in her bus seat by the window. "You admit that the physical world, samsara, is full of deception and is, at its base nature, transitory. Everything passes, in time."

"There is a great difference between being transitory and being illusory," said the Daoist, an older woman. "After all, would you say that this pilgrimage is an illusion? Would you call your good deeds an illusion?"

"Yes, I would," insisted her friend.

"Really? Then is love an illusion? Is our friendship?"

"You are asking the wrong questions." The Zen devotee shifted uneasily in her seat. "That is like asking if enlightenment is an illusion."

"Is enlightenment an illusion?"

"It makes no difference if enlightenment is an illusion or not."

Not Zen 52: How to Be Impatient

At the train station, a customer trembled with rage as he tried to get the flex return tickets he knew were available. The fellow behind the counter didn't understand how to make the transaction.

So the customer stood at the window for half an hour as he struggled to get the ticket man to understand and do what he wanted. He got frustrated. He shouted. Other ticket agents came over to calm the customer down. As the customer tried to explain to them, he saw a middle-aged woman walk up to the ticket window he had vacated.

"I need a flex return," she said.

"I don't know how to do that," said the man behind the counter, much as he had done with his earlier customer.

"What do you do when you're asked for unfamiliar transactions?" she asked.

"I'm supposed to look them up on this sheet." The young fellow waved a sheet of paper he'd tried to read while his earlier customer was shouting.

"Well, go ahead," said the woman.

"I don't read very well." He pointed to the lines on the chart and moved his lips as he struggled to understand.  In about two minutes, he found the flex return charge method.  The woman had not spoken a single word as he worked.

The first customer couldn't hear the entire exchange but he understood that the second patron was getting what she wanted.  After she was done, he approached her.

"How did you get him to do that?" He waved in the direction of the ticket desk.

"I explained what I wanted. I'm in a hurry too, you know. You'll have to walk with me if you want to talk."

"But he's stupid!" The man fell in beside her. "How did you get him to understand?"

"I saw a part of what happened to you. You showed contempt for his slowness and made him nervous. But I could tell he wanted to help."

"He kept dropping things! And he couldn't read!"

"He got flustered by your shouting. If you had remained calm and tried to see things from his perspective, you would have gotten your ticket in about two minutes, the way I did."

Not Zen 51: Mind or Body

"Teacher, I am ill today."  With cheeks flushed, the novice sat in his usual place.

"I'm sorry to hear that," said the guru without looking at him.  "You may be excused from meditations and from your other chores."

"I do not wish to be excused, teacher.  I want to understand."  The student wiped his sweaty brow.  "Is the illness in my body or only in my mind?  Can I heal myself through force of will?"

"Zen teaches us that the body is an illusion.  Therefore, illness of the body is also an illusion."

The student took a long while to respond.  "But do you believe that really?"

"The Dao teaches us that the body is transitory and the mind also passes away.  Your illness will pass if you but rest a while."

"The Dao tells us to nap?"

"I did, too, but you weren't listening."

Not Zen 50: The Bird Watchers

John, a long-time student of religion went to visit his friend who had risen to the Dean of Academics at a rather young age. This friend, both pleased and concerned by John's lack of concern for worldly matters, offered to take him on a research expedition deep into an old, great forest.

"You'll love it," he said. "It's a fascinating place full of things you'll never see anywhere else. And our staff is impressive. Professor Whitt knows more about birds than anyone else you'll ever meet."

So the expedition traveled to the forest and John, as a manual laborer, accompanied  them. After they set up camp the first day, John noticed the elderly professor was missing. An inquiry lent him knowledge of the man's probable whereabouts and, hoping to learn from the professor's vast experience with birds, he followed. In a little while, he found the shelter where the old man had secluded himself.  John joined him. They sat in silence for a moment.

"What are you doing?" John whispered.

"Listening to the birds," said the professor.

"What do you hear?"

The professor replied that he had heard several types of birds. He mentioned them by name and went into detail about their distinctive songs. Right now, he said, he was listening to a mating call. The professor knew the difference between the territorial and the merely amorous, between a reassuring coo and wary squawk, between the sound of a hunter and a cry of alarm. This particular male bird was trying to attract a mate and the professor was waiting for a female to answer.

John stayed a while and listened. The professor seemed a bit agitated to have someone else nearby. So John left. A few yards down the trail back to camp, he came across the professor's wife. She was sitting on a blanket, reading. She smiled and nodded at John.

"Do you listen to birds, too?" he said.

"Only when I'm not reading," the old woman replied. Just then, the male bird cried out loudly. "Ah, poor thing."

"Poor thing? You mean because it has no mate?"

"No, because it's sick."

John listened. He couldn't tell. "How do you know? Do you know a lot about birds?"

She shook her head. "Oh no, I don't know anything. But listen and you'll hear it. It sounds different from the others of it's kind. It's much weaker."

They sat and listened for a while. Then the old woman smiled and went back to her book.

When John got back to camp, his friend asked him, "Well, what did you think of the professor?"

"He certainly knows a lot about birds," John allowed. "But I think his wife is enlightened."

Not Zen 49: Practice of Affection

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

His fiance knew that this had been something he'd thought about doing for several years, so 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. 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, the 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. "What is enlightenment without love? Aren't they joined? Shouldn't you know that?"

The young man had no reply. The next day, he asked his teacher this question about love and enlightenment. When he was not satisfied with the answer, he returned to his home town. He made apologies to his friends. Then he married his teacher, the woman who had followed him to the temple.

Not Zen 48: Doctor of Philosophy

A man lay on his deathbed, struck down by a fever. With his doctor and family around him, he complained about his pain and suffering. He expressed his regrets that he'd never spent time to become enlightened, although he'd always meant to devote himself more to religion.

“What has my life been about?” he wondered.

“We come into this world alone,” replied the doctor, who was a bit of a philosopher. “And alone we leave it. Between the entrance and the exit, we suffer hardships and cruelties, for such is the lot of a mortal life.”

“Is that all?”

“Nonsense,” said another voice. “You came into this world in good company. You're leaving it with friends and family all around. Doctors are idiots. That's why we have to die.”

“Yes, mother,” said the dying man. He laughed until he coughed.

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."