Walking Ryutaku's Edge (top)
Doug Friedlander
"Outside of poetry, there is no Zen; Outside of Zen, there is no poetry."
--Ryutaku
It was a rainy Saturday night and I was driving to distant Hillsborough with my housemate Mary Alice Scott for a potluck. In typical fashion, I had left the house without directions. My "plan" to compensate for this was to drive to Hillsborough and hope to find a familiar landmark. Unfortunately, the only "familiar" landmark was a pay phone, from which I called for directions. As it turned out we were only five minutes away, but while missing the only turn we needed to make to get there, Mary Alice related to me the following tale, a true story that happened to her very own step-mother. This is how it goes:
In the vicinity of Batesville, Arkansas (population: 9,128), there are two towns of note: Pleasant Plains and Pleasant Grove, each about twenty miles from Batesville. It came to pass one day that Mrs. Scott read about a family that was selling an antique table in Pleasant Grove, so she telephoned them and got directions to their home.
"You take the only road into town, and you make a left onto the first gravel road you see," they explained. "Go past the cow pasture, and when you get to the top of the hill, you'll see a white house with a white picket fence on your left. Keep going and then as you go around the bend, look up the hill on the left and that will be our house."
Straightforward enough. Particular, if provincial, directions. So off Mrs. Scott went. She drove into town on the only road going in, made a left on the first gravel road, and sure enough, there was a cow pasture. She went up a hill, and as expected, saw a white house with a white picket fence on the left. She went around a bend, saw a house up the hill on the left, pulled into the driveway and knocked on the door.
"Hi, I'm Vicki Scott. I'm here about the antique table," she said.
"The what? We don't have any antique table."
"The antique table I telephoned you about. You gave me directions here."
"Ma'am. We honestly have no idea what you're talking about. Are you sure you're at the right house?"
"Of course I'm sure! The directions I had were very clear. I turned left on the first gravel road, saw a cow pasture, went over a hill, saw a house and white picket fence, went around the bend and saw your house on the hill. This has GOT to be it."
"I understand, but we don't know anything about a table."
"But you have to! Here, look at this phone number. This is your phone number. I called you and spoke with you about the table, and you gave me these directions."
"Ma'am, '383' is not a prefix in Pleasant Plains."
She was in the entirely wrong town! And yet… all the directions seemed to work!
"Whoa," I said after a few seconds, a little dizzy, "There's A LOT in that story."
"What do you mean?" Mary Alice said. "I was just trying to tell a funny story!"
After hearing that story, I was struck with a certain feeling of horror. Imagine going through your entire life, I thought, doing all the "right" things and seeming to get all sorts of positive reinforcement - like landmarks suggesting that you're on the right track—only to find out you did it all in the wrong town. You never even had a chance!
"I guess you're right," said Mary Alice. "It's gruesome how context makes such a difference."
"What do you mean by context?" I said.
"Like the ego. If you're doing something that to all outward appearances is a 'right' or a 'good' thing to be doing, something 'selfless' let's say, but in reality, you're doing it all in the context of the ego, then it's all for naught. All your 'right' turns are in the wrong town."
And that's a very good way to put it. The Buddhists don't talk in terms of "right" and "wrong" (in the moral absolute sense) but rather in terms of behavior which is either "skillful" or "unskillful." Being selfish, for example, may either be considered "wrong" or "unskillful," depending on how you look at it. But either way, both of these angles imply that if you want to live a rewarding life, selfishness is a hindrance. Just about anything that one might consider morally wrong turns out to be unskillful, but the change of emphasis is significant.
This cleave between skillful and unskillful fascinates me. There are many valid ways to attempt to describe this cleave between "right action, right thinking, right living" (to use the Buddhist terminology) and not-right action, not-right thinking, not-right living, etc. The one I'll offer up for now is one that I picked up from Dean William Willimon, who, if I'm not mistaken, picked it up from Bob Dylan, who, if I'm not mistaken, picked it up from someone else. As Dylan put it, "You're gonna serve somebody. It may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna serve somebody." In everything you're doing, in every action, in some way you're serving someone or something, some idea.
Therefore, I offer up the following "contextual" razor to make that fine cut between skillful and unskillful, ala Mary Alice, Dean Willimon, and St. Bob: "Who are you serving?" Why is it that you're really doing what you're doing? Is it because you're bored? Because you're afraid? Or is your action in the service of a lifelong project which serves...what? Who or what is it you're really serving in spite of all outward manifestations?
Just last week, my friend Rachel and I were talking over dinner at Elmo's Diner about all of this.
"I just feel like there's one right way to execute any action," I said, "No matter how apparently good or bad."
"Yeah. One right way and just about a thousand wrong ways," she said.
"I know what you mean. It seems that those things which are traditionally rendered as 'bad ideas' are the ones that tend to have far more ways to really screw them up than get them right. There's a lot more ways to screw up drinking and promiscuous sex than there are ways to screw up reading and meditating."
"And at the same time, we both know people who've managed to make a mania out of even reading and meditation. There's some other factor, because clearly it's not all in the particulars of the action. There's something else going on."
"It's almost like if you can just hold your head the right way, you'll find and experience spiritual depth in the mundane. At the same time, hold it in the wrong way, and you can turn 'high' practices into garbage. Make yourself crazy."
"I know what you mean," she said. "There's a sweet spot."
"Exactly. There are some days when you're coming from a place where everything you do is right. You know you're doing it for the right reasons. You have absolute clarity. You can do no wrong. Other days…"
"...you're taking the axe to old money-lending Russian women!"
She's right. There are some days (and again there are a million ways to express this) when your ego just sleeps in a little later than you do, when you're connected to something and everything you're doing is being done because that's how it should be. You are serving something beyond yourself, something in which you are only infinitesimally significant and yet infinitely necessary. Your spontaneous action, your intuition, is leading you to a greater perfection of living than all the attempts at perfection you've been living out of up until then. Other days, when your ego is playing deft ventriloquist to your other faculties, thank God for some conditioning!
And I suppose there's the rub and the challenge. First, to be able to realize that on different days, you're serving different things, even if it never occurred to you before. Second, once you know what sort of game is afoot, to realize how easy it is to be serving one thing one day and something completely different the next, without ever noticing the switch. And why is this so important? Because in this paradigm I set up of "who you serve," you don't get points for being close. Each degree of difference in what's really driving you, in who you are really serving, is really a whole different mind-set, a totally unique way of perceiving (and thus responding to) the world. And each is like a unique set of train tracks, leading you from one thought to the next along a guided and finite line. And though these parallel train tracks may be only an inch apart, they never cross. They are but "one thought away" from one another, these tracks. But unfortunately, the odds against leaping to another track's thoughts from the track you're on are enough give one some humility.
I keep thinking of that quote by St. Augustine: "Love God and do what you will," he said.
But unfortunately, there is an infinite chasm between the imitation of that quote and truly living it, between right-thinking and not right-thinking, between the skillful and the unskillful. And fortunately or unfortunately, this chasm comes from a distinction as subtle as the difference between a plain and a grove, pleasant though they both be.
In search of the Way
I, busy, stacking bamboo
While Ryutaku laughs
Leaving the Lights Off (top)
Leila Plummer
When I was seventeen, I wanted to study in Chihuahua, Mexico. I'd only had two years of Spanish, and had never been out of the country for more than a week. I'm not sure what I wanted—romance, adventure, enlightenment—but somehow, it all came down to Mexico.
The nation symbolized everything to me. I was tired of talking about how much I loved other cultures, how much I loved Spanish, when I could barely ask "¿A dónde vas?" Since I was young I had associated myself with female sleuths and archaeologists—the kind that would drop everything for an adventure—and this was my chance to prove myself.
I attended an interest meeting and got psyched. I hooked up with a roommate, picked out an apartment, and decided to put down a deposit. At night Mexico was all I thought about before sleeping. I kept brochures by my bed, and poured over them so often that I memorized each bulleted item. In my mind, there was no other course but the one to Chihuahua. That was when I asked my parents for permission and they said no.
I was shocked, and furious—in my mind, I had asked them only out of courtesy, like asking for a blessing. I never thought they would forbid the trip. To myself I was mature (after all, I was a junior in college), but to them I was simply naive (I was only seventeen). I couldn't believe they didn't trust my judgment. They couldn't believe I didn't trust their advice.
I was furious. I slammed my hand into the counter, yelled, and left the room. It was the only time in my life that I have been unable to speak to my parents. We'd never been so mad at each other. Weeks later, after a lot of arguing, they said I could go, on the condition that I take karate lessons. (And it was a good thing they relented—I'd already put down a second deposit.)
In the weeks before I left, I had lucid dreams—visions of coming of age. One night, I dreamed that my college friends and I were riding in a spaceship, labeled Mexico, to a world where only adults lived. I dreamed I was an archaeologist prowling through a Mayan jungle. I dreamed I was on a quest.
In the weeks before I left, my mother wept inconsolably, as though her heart was breaking. Mexico was a specter. She'd read about the Mexico City kidnappings of young women, seen the tourist warnings. She knew I didn't have much experience, and was just as afraid of what I might do as of what the world might do to me. She was afraid that I would fall in love and would not come home. She was afraid I would do "something stupid." Leaving her sobbing on the couch one morning, tears streaming down her face and her breath hot on my face, was almost too much for me. Letting me walk onto the plane was almost too much for her.
My mother was right—at the end of four weeks, I didn't want to come back. Returning to Kahlo's "Gringolandia" brought culture shock. In Mexico, I had been someone else. I bought groceries for a beggar's family. I kept my own apartment. I visited haciendas and archaeological ruins, a cave behind a waterfall, Indians that lived just as they did 500 years ago. I went to dinner with a musician who played Andean melodies for me and gave me a hand-carved flute. I learned to live on Mexican time, to move more slowly and more sensually. In a baroque cathedral, I dropped to my knees. I fell into beauty and wonder, and felt so intense, so authentic, that returning to my "real life" in the U.S. was actually painful.
Looking back, Mexico wasn't risky. I was in the North, where the crime rate is lower than ours. My actions were made up of a "deliberate spontaneity"—there was no chance of doing something regrettable. The most threatening thing I did was to trust my life to the lightning-fast city drivers. For my mother, what I did was dangerous. A huge risk, with what at first appeared to be a trivial reward: a fun vacation. For me, it was the simplest thing, the most certain. If I hadn't gone to Mexico, I always would have wondered what could have happened. It would have been an awful waste.
So it turns out that what seems risky, often isn't. What seems safe is full of peril. "There is no way to know before experiencing," wrote Robert Anthony.
I've been thinking a lot lately about what is important, about what I want from life. I've questioned my career, location and relationships. I've been debating leaving graduate school. It seemed like a cardinal sin; at first I thought I would be branded a failure. But it's been like grace. As soon as I stopped being scared, as soon as I started to give up control, stopped trying to win at the game everyone else was playing, things have begun to liquefy. It's not that the rules don't exist, or that there aren't dragons waiting for those who break them, but rather that the fire they breathe isn't nearly as scary or as lethal as I had thought. I wonder if all of this anxiety about what I need to do isn't beside the point, as my mother's fears about Mexico were beautiful but had nothing to do with the truth of the dangers.
What I am afraid of may not be real. So it's not a question of following the rules or not following them, of choosing one way or another, so much as it is realizing that the games don't demand that you play at all. It's Sarah in Jim Henson's Labyrinth, saying "You have no power over me," it's Neo realizing that "there is no spoon." It's whistling in the darkness, forcing yourself to walk through and leave the lights off.
"In letting go of the absurdity and even the arrogance of believing that we know what the next moment will bring, we relinquish our grip on reality and surrender into the mystery of not knowing, moment to moment, what will appear next in awareness," wrote Gavin Harrison. So it may not be that I have to figure everything out, that my future has to be secure. It may instead be that the moment I let go, I'll fall into certainty. Just like some archaeologist in a novel—through a trap door, into a treasure room.
Return to top of this issue
Read the previous issue of The Symposium
