Tuesday, August 14, 2012

an unnatural spiritual life

.
Once upon a time at the Zen Monastery I flunked out of, there was a morning meeting at which chores were apportioned to the ten or so members present. My job was to clean up the path around the smallish lake across which a large Buddha statue could be seen from the monastery buildings.

The statue rested among the woods that ran up to the water's edge and was the sole man-made item in view. Everything else was poplars and birches and evergreens and ... nature. My assignment was to assure the path around the lake was not overgrown or littered with weeds or fallen branches. My last instruction before I headed out to work was, "Make it look natural."

The idiocy of the instruction was immediately apparent: If anyone really wanted things to look natural, they would have removed the statue and let nature run her course. But we were younger then and there was a kind of uppity smugness at presenting an imagined koan or intellectually insoluble riddle: How could anyone make something look natural that was already natural? It was the kind of situation that allowed more 'advanced' Zen students to indulge their sense that things were infused with a "deeeeeep meaning" and wasn't that what Zen monasteries were in business for? Oh goody!

I went about my unnatural chore and fulfilled my morning obligations, pulling weeds, removing fallen limbs and generally making the path around the lake passable. Early in the endeavor, I gave up trying to imagine that my work were 'natural' ... or 'unnatural' either. And perhaps Zen students everywhere might clap their hands in delight at my surrender: "You see?! You see?!" as if some profound teaching had been transmitted and they were party to the transmission. As I say, we were all younger then and inflated with the fear that somehow such efforts as Zen Buddhism might lack any meaning whatsoever... and if it lacked meaning, what the hell were we doing at a Zen monastery in the first place?

It took me two months of a projected six-month stay at the monastery to recognize that I was not cut out to be a monk. Looking back, I am grateful for the discovery, though at the time I was infused with shame at my inabilities: I had signed up with the notion that monastic life was a sure-fire way of reaching the apex of spiritual effort. It was the heroin-addict's creed: If one's good, two's better: If practicing seated meditation as part of a lay life was really a good idea, imagine how much better it might be if it were practiced in a 24/7 atmosphere that was 'spiritual' from muzzle to butt plate. Well, it wasn't better. In fact, it was as unnatural as trying to make the path around the lake look natural. At the time, I thought I was a failure in some sense. Looking back, I feel quite successful: Honesty is more important than goodness.

But finding honesty is not always easy. Probably the easiest way is to practice some dishonesty ... something contrived, perhaps, or decorated with pompoms of sparkle and delight ... something like 'spiritual endeavor.' The baby steps towards limitlessness are informed by teetering and wobbling in a world of limitation. Is there a way to avoid it? I don't think so: Pick a lie, dig deep, and winkle out the truth. Make the path look natural. Sometimes I think that what passes for wisdom is little more than accumulating and being unafraid of the lessons of inescapable and honest error.

Make the path that is already natural 'look natural.'

Lest anyone think that I am suggesting that monastic life is nothing but horse pucky, I want to say that that is not my feeling at all. There is nothing 'wrong' with monastic life. It isn't and wasn't consistent with whatever honesty I possess ... that's all. There is nothing 'wrong' with monastic life any more than there is something 'right' about it. It's just one possibility in the effort to make natural what is already natural. And when it comes to what is already natural, what fool would employ something called "effort?"

Making an effort would be foolish.

Not making an effort would be foolish.

Who is not the fool?

Or -- as a sop to the nimble and defensive and adroit -- who is?
.

No comments:

Post a Comment