This isn’t the first time I’ve posted a picture of the chalkboard outside the Hannah Grimes Marketplace in downtown Keene, but it is the first time I remember this chalkboard sporting such profound words of wisdom. As I hurried the dog around Central Square today, I was thinking of the laundry-list of things I have to do this week, the last week of summer classes at the three different places where I’ve been teaching. I’ve been long looking forward to the end of this term since next week will mark the first real “break” I’ve had since finishing and defending the dissertation back in April, and I’m feeling burnt out. Teaching these past two months has felt like I’ve been sprinting on a treadmill right after finishing a long-distance marathon: I need a break, but the finish line keeps retreating.
There is an old Zen story about a monk and his young attendant who are traveling from their isolated mountain monastery to the bustling town that lies in the valley below. As they approach their destination and crest a ridge that reveals the expanse of shops, inns, and taverns on the outskirts of town, the attendant starts to step up his pace, excited at the prospect of getting away from the mundane drudgery of the lonely monastery. “Wait,” the old monk says as his hand reaches out to grab the hastening attendant’s shoulder. “This place is good, too.”
Most of us don’t have Zen monks grabbing our shoulders to remind us to enjoy the moment, and only some of us encounter shop signs to that effect. Instead, most of us have to rely on our own inner compass, the awakened eye that notices a tendril of newly-blossomed roses curling around the edge of our own house: a purely private, typically overlooked reminder. These ephemeral signs point to the utter randomness of days that offer both beauty and brutality mixed in nonsensical profusion. On the same day that Kim Sun-il was beheaded in Iraq, a cluster of roses bloomed in Keene: surely there can be no connection between the two? And yet upon hearing yet more heart-breaking news, I responded the only way I as a Buddhist, as a heavy hearted human, knew how, by chanting the same bodhisattva-evoking melody that I intoned years ago when my father was diagnosed with cancer, when my grandmother died of Alzheimer’s disease, when I myself could barely breathe much less chant, my lungs laden with asthma and a winter’s bout of bronchitis. In the midst of flowering beauty, mortality blossoms: the ultimate sign of life’s randomness. These roses bloomed outside the window where I chanted, the words I sung ever pointing to the fact that breath is finite, that flowers and followers alike will eventually find their destined end. In the meantime, we all would be well-served to enjoy the moment, since we so easily forget that this is all we ever truly have.
Jun 22, 2004 at 11:45 pm
Thanks, Lori, for expressing what I felt today, but didn’t know how to say.
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Jun 23, 2004 at 2:35 am
I share Beth’s sentiment. Sometimes when I read your words, it frees my own thoughts, imprisoned by an inadequate vocabulary and my own inability to recognize how to best set them loose. Reading this entry released a bit of the logjam of vague, unformed feelings that would have otherwise never found the words to make them tangible.
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Jun 23, 2004 at 8:01 am
Beth & Shane, I’m glad my words helped you to articulate your feelings. The news these days is so grim: it’s difficult to know what to think & feel, much less how to express these inklings. At the same time, in the midst of all this tragedy & sadness there is nevertheless such joy & beauty around us: it is this contradiction, I think, that is the most poignant. Depressing as it is, the news serves to remind us all that life is precious even if some folks ignore that fact.
Thanks for reading & taking the time to comment.
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Jun 23, 2004 at 8:04 am
You said it, sister: “…this is all we ever truly have.” I think that’s why I have re-doubled my efforts to write what I’m writing. To say that the ugly presentation of the world that we see in the news is not the world, it is only part of the world; elsewhere a rose blooms, elsewhere a monk chants, elsewhere a young man falls head over heels in love.
There’s a tromp, tromp to the generations that pulls us through this life oh much too quickly; and yet, as you say, THIS moment is all we have. Thanks for the reminder.
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Jun 23, 2004 at 8:48 am
Oh Lorianne, thank you. We all know it, and we all constantly forget it.
There’s so little we can do about the horrors, but so much more we can do to appreciate and encourage the beautiful and good.
The rose tendrils photo is wonderful.
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Jun 23, 2004 at 12:42 pm
Thank you so much.
I had the stereo on when I was reading the news this morning. I got up at one point to get something, and my favorite song came around on the CD. I did what I always do–I sang along and did the goofy little dance I do when no one else is around; and then I stopped, stunned that I could so easily just dance when it was a horrible day, a terrible day of sadness and violence. And then I thought: all I can do is dance. It’s all I can do, like chanting a name. It’s not ignoring the world, it’s doing the only thing that one can do at any given moment.
Thank you again and again.
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Jun 23, 2004 at 6:33 pm
I don’t usually think in terms of Satan, but trying it on, I’d guess that his dearest hope, in cultivating all these horrors, is that it will stop you from doing your goofy dance, Andi.
We’ll dance on the Devil’s grave yet. See if we don’t.
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Jun 23, 2004 at 9:57 pm
You’re so right, so many moments in the day – the sadness of the news, the frustrated and angry reactions in me, the annoyance of being in traffic… and still the black-eyed Susans on my dining room table, picked by the side of the road on Sunday, made me stop and smile. And yes, some song on the radio later made me dance around in the kitchen while washing the dishes. Life is funny that way.
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Jun 26, 2004 at 7:25 pm
Tom, you hit it on the head. Mortality & senseless violence are the reason *why* we try to capture the mundane details of ordinary people living ordinary lives. Natalie Goldberg has a chapter in *Writing Down the Bones* where she writes about the importance of remembering the *names* of people who died in the Holocaust: it reminds us that individuals matter. I feel I’m doing something similar whenever I write or post photos: these individual details matter. The world would be a sadder, emptier space if they were taken from it.
Lin, I’m so glad you enjoyed the post. It’s so easy to feel helpless these days, and so easy to fall into despair. And yet these feelings lead nowhere, they only rob our own lives of joy. Senseless violence reminds us all that our time on this planet is short, so we might as well grab as much joy as we possibly can.
Andi, your comment reminded me of that line from the Hebrew Scriptures: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” To many ears, this sounds pessimistic, morbid, or disrespectful, but it simply points to a fact of life: time is short, so don’t skimp on joy.
Dale, I love this image of dancing on “Satan’s” grave. If Satan is a personification of human ignorance & self-centeredness, then with each step of the joyous dance we become wiser & more in-touch with the universe?
Leslee, it’s the randomness of those black-eyed susans and that song that makes them beautiful. If *everything* were beautiful, flowers would be dull. The contrast of seeing them right when our heart is breaking makes them that much sweeter.
Thanks, everyone, for the hope-inspiring comments!
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