Street Level Zen: Greed

"You can't have everything. Where would you put it?"

Steven Wright







(Photo of a basement that looks nothing like mine courtesy of Tom W. Sulcer and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Steller's jay

(Cyanocitta stelleri)

Going Over the Wall

In the tales of the Desert Fathers, a young monk complains to his teacher that his brothers are going over the wall. They're diluting the sanctity of the cloister, he says, and obstructing the pursuit of saintliness.

The old abba listens, and after a silence, says: "You know, when I was your age, I went to town every day." The student is scandalised. His own teacher, so wise and holy!

"Every day," repeats the abba. "When I was tired, I went. Even when I was sick."

"But Abba! Why?"

"To relieve myself of the burden of never having been to town."

That a Christian – a scholar of forgiveness – authored this koan is significant.

I was a horrific prig as a young man. I blamed others – everybody, to be honest – for disappointments large and small. Eventually I fell afoul of other prigs, and saw my error. Now I'm happy to be more often hurt by these people than to hurt others along with them.

But pride is a hard habit to break. Zenners often belittle Christians, their practice, even Jesus himself. It's easy to do; few Christians even seem to try to walk their Tathagata's path. (Indeed, it's a heresy: Jesuism.)

Yet our Christian brothers and sisters have no monopoly on hypocrisy. If they run too often to the messianic well, and mock up Gothic intrigues, we too have made Pauls of our predecessors and saviours of our sages. Our "don't-know-mind" is arrestingly contingent. The day we look at our neighbours and see ourselves, we will set these delusions down.

It's not as if our own religion is illiterate to forgiveness. Or, hell: just honesty.


(Adapted from 100 Days on the Mountain, copyright RK Henderson.)

WW: February fudo

(Twelve-strand kongo Diamond Sutra model.)

20 March is Bodhisattva Day

On 20 March, I'm inviting all my brother and sister seekers to be mindful of the Bodhisattva. "Bodhisattva" is the Buddhist term for those who dedicate their lives to ending suffering, in ways large and small, and also – especially – for that bit inside all of us that urges us in that direction.

Why 20 March? Because that's Fred Rogers' birthday. "Mr. Rogers" was a North American children's entertainer ("mentor" is a better term) who embodied the Bodhisattva Way. His gentle, respectful demeanour and careful attention to those around him are legendary. It's also completely true; my brother and I met him at a public television business function when we were 4 and 6. He gave us his undivided attention, genuinely interacting with us and ignoring the politicians and PBS executives milling about. And I've had similar stories from others. Dude was real.

So there may be others as qualified as my brother Fred to be the poster child of bodhisattva nature, but I doubt there's anyone better.

Therefore I propose that 20 March be Bodhisattva Day. You don't gotta be Buddhist to get a piece; Mr. Rogers wasn't. (He was an ordained Presbyterian minister.) You just have to agree that people should strive to default to their compassionate impulses, as a matter of policy.

I further suggest that, as an unobtrusive and respectful statement of conviction, we honour this day of reflection by wearing a cardigan sweater.

But no pinching people who don't, eh?

Mr. Rogers' own cardigan, now on display
at the Smithsonian.

(Photos courtesy of KUHT [Mr. Rogers on-set], Rudi Riet [Mr. Rogers' sweater], and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Para-surfer

Remembrance

Cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe
And murdered the House of Donald

13 February, 1692

(And thank God for fleet ancestors.)

(Photo of the appropriately-named Devil's Staircase, one of only two escape routes from the glen, looking much as it did that winter night, courtesy of Colin Souza and Wikimedia Commons.)