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?"

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

wikimedia commons, LN9267

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."