I’ve been all kinds of munchy this week, so today’s thoughts are two (funny to me) pages from my calendar that came almost back-to-back a week or so ago:
Enlightenment is: do what
you want
eat what there is.- Jack Kerouac
Someone asked Master Yun-men, “What is the most urgent phrase?”
The Master said, “Eat!”- Yun-men’s One Word Zen
I went to Wikipedia to look up the spelling of Reiki, which it calls “a spiritual practice developed in 1922 by Mikao Usui”. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s a tradition that says there is an intelligent force of energy that exist throughout the universe and within us, and that with training, you can use your hands to direct this force to help injuries and illnesses heal.
While I was there I skimmed down a little to see anything said by the founder, and found a translation of something I really kinda like. I especially like the “Just for today”, because it lets the rebellious little misery-mite be content with the idea that you’re not permanently shushing it, so it’ll maybe sit this one out so you can focus on creating a brighter day.
Here’s the quote –
The secret method of inviting good fortune.
The marvelous medicine for all sickness
Just for today:
Do not be angry
Do not worry
Be grateful
Work with integrity
Be kind to others and to yourself.
Every morning and every night, sit in the Gassho position [hands held palm-to-palm] and speak these words out loud in your heart.
For the evolution of body and soul, Usui Reiki Ryoho- Mikao Usui, the founder
I’m going to retell a Zen story that I came across again on today’s calendar page. To me, it conveys how much easier it is to bear a situation if you don’t feel totally stuck and recognize that there is a way out (however unpleasant). It also gets me thinking about letting go, and how it’s so much easier to work with life if you keep your mind and hands open.
Here’s how it goes…
A husband and wife felt lost in an endless swamp of financial and social troubles. They could see no possible options to solve their debts nor their shame, and had decided that the only way out was a double suicide. They were just working out the best and fastest way to exit together, when there was a knock on their door.
An old friend had stopped by for a surprise visit from many miles away in the country. The couple welcomed their friend, and all three of them talked through the night about old times, about everyone back home with their triumphs and troubles, and all the things old friends catch up on. Right before leaving the next morning, the friend said how wonderful it was to see them and promised to visit again as soon as possible.
As the door closed, the wife turned to her husband and said, “You know, last night gave me a lot of time to think. It occurred to me that we can survive this, so long as we live with our minds utterly ready to die at a moment’s notice, should it come to that.” The husband replied, “I was just going to say that exact same thing!”
I truly believe good humor is a really huge component of success. It helps us take ourselves and situations more lightly, which frees our energy from getting all hung up. If we can laugh, we can release some of the tension and work with what’s left — and maybe even be a little more in the mood to handle it. In all the research I’ve read into theories on the nature and origins of humor, a release of tension has been the most common thread.
It’s because of this that humor doesn’t just help us weather adversity; it helps us learn and prepare. When we find something funny or entertaining, our minds open up to it in a way that we otherwise might not have. Our guard relaxes, making us more ready to accept that new or different thing.
I think there’s something else to it, too. I think we often find something to be funny cause it’s true, or because it exposes an untruth. That’s a vague generalization, but I think there’s something to it.
Anyway, that’s all what I thought of with regards to today’s quote:
When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.
- George Bernard Shaw
I’ve got some words from Cary Tennis that I just ran into again, from his advice column on Sunday. Someone was asking about whether it was better to stay in a relationship that wasn’t really feeding her personal happiness, but his response is, as usual, very much broader than just the question asked.
I think it’s a great reminder to keep in touch with what, deep down, we truly want and need. And to acknowledge them and work with them without condemnation. It’s not selfish to be happy and cared for. It’s our job, because the world needs us at our best, and nobody else can do for us what we need to do for ourselves.
I think it is legitimate to act according to your deepest and truest necessities, because your deepest and truest necessities do not spring from you and are not controlled by you; they spring from where you exist in the world; they come to you as instructions from the world and are thus not selfish and narrow as you might fear; they are broad and universal and thus poetic and heroic.
They are bigger than any narrowly conceived right-or-wrong principle.
- Cary Tennis, Since You Asked 10/25/09
How to do that, you may ask? Well since I’m actually putting this up onto the blog a good while after I first shared it, I’m going to continue the quote with a really great paragraph:
This framework I suggest says: Trust in the community of things beyond you; be in harmony with your deepest self, because that is the bigger way of truth; it is the bigger way; it may seem full of tragedy and apparent misstep, of apparent moral failing; it may bring down upon your head the judgment of others, of family and loved ones and later your own offspring; it may make you seem to be a person of questionable judgment; it may cause you to be an outcast. But if it is true to your destiny in this deep sense — which can only be discovered by relentless self-inquiry and relentless allowing-in of the necessary, by allowing the earth to move you toward the place you belong, by trusting that it’s not just about you and your decision but about where the world requires you to be — then I think in the end there is some justice in whatever decision you might make.
According to Wikipedia, Matsuo Basho was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. That’s pretty impressive, since the Edo period is listed as going from 1603 to 1868, whereas Basho was only around from 1644 to 1694. He was a famous haiku poet and teacher at the time, but preferred to wander the countryside for inspiration rather than languish in high society.
I think it’s because of his preference for going out and experiencing life that makes him so vibrant and accessible… and funny. He’s another one of my favorite examples of a “stodgy and staid” topic like “respectable poetry” having room for rascals. So in honor of Basho and a very wild week, I want to share a translation of one of his poems (I don’t know who translated it):
Eaten alive by
lice and fleas — now the horse
beside my pillow pees- Basho
I’m back from being ill at the beginning of the week, and swamped yesterday! Getting my head back together, I caught up with my calendar and came across the quote from yesterday that I’m gonna share:
I don’t like work — no man does — but I like what is in work — the chance to find yourself.
- Joseph Conrad
I’ve got a couple thoughts on perspective, from a 20th century Cuban-Catalan-French author and a 9th century Chinese zen master. I like the very different worlds the two came from, to arrive at a very similar point:
We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.
- Anais Nin
The wise reject what they think, not what they see.
- Huangbo Xiyun
I was talking the other day about the difference between Hermit Zen versus Living Zen, I think I’ll call them. While the latter is about trying to better live our lives in this world, the former is more about escaping the world entirely. After all, one might say, if the world is such a grand scam of an illusion, the best thing one could do is to ignore it and not get caught up.
That’s all on my mind again, and I truly do understand the draw of Hermit Zen. The idea of chucking it all and going to live in the mountains can be very appealing. So much of the philosophical and mystical texts focus on the ‘unreality’ of our reality that it can get to seeming like there’s no point to any of it. So yeah, I do get where Hermit Zenners come from. Except for the fact that the world remains so very fun and beautiful that it’d be a real shame to waste it.
So I’m more of the approach of Ikkyu, our old wild-spirited zen poet friend. He saw the dangers of getting so wrapped up in the idea of enlightenment that you lose sight of the great, fun-filled life of enjoying enlightenment. See through the fleetingness of it all, yeah, but lifting those gloom-tinted glasses shows me not a graveyard of crumbling dust, but a garden of blooming beauty.
So here’s a poem by Ikkyu about a kind of study meditation I can enjoy…
A Fisherman
Studying texts and stiff meditation can make you lose your Original Mind.
A solitary tune by a fisherman, though, can be an invaluable treasure.
Dusk rain on the river, the moon peeking in and out of the clouds;
Elegant beyond words, he chants his songs night after night.- Ikkyu (1394-1481)
So I had a bit of a disappointment over the weekend. Nothing major, just something I’d planned is just going to have to wait another few weeks, but it was still a disappointment. As hectic as things have been, it weighed on me just a little more than it otherwise might — but if life has taught me anything, it’s taught me a small bit of patience.
After a weekend of trying to play catch-up, it was still a bit on my mind. So I came in to work and saw the last two quotes I’d been saving to share, and they both go together with my thoughts. So here they are:
To enjoy the world without judgment is what a realized life is like.
- Charlotte Joko Beck
It takes a certain maturity of mind to accept that nature works as steadily in rust as in roses.
- Esther Warner Dendel
