WW: Pacific sideband snail

(Monadenia fidelis.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Hermits and Hotdogs

In the fifty-odd years I've worked with pets and farm animals, I've learned that anxious and abused ones often fear men – but women, not so much.

Some of this gender-specific apprehension may be down to the fact that we're bigger, louder, and maybe don't smell as nice. But a lot of men also appear to believe the world is an action movie, of which they're the beefcake.

They hurt everything that doesn't meet their approval, usually while shouting. And those guys create dread and disconsolation in many creatures.

Catch enough of that, and any sentient being learns mistrust.

You can accomplish a great deal with their victims by just sitting nearby, not reaching out, speaking quietly or not at all. It takes steady patience, but often eventually works. Perhaps the target simply concludes, based on available data, that we're not really "men". (Or maybe that we're just not failed men, which would be accurate. Brothers barging around hotdogging for the camera snatch the lion's share of attention, which is why we non-gnawers of scenery tend to fade into it.)

I was put in mind of this recently during a night sit in the back yard. First, a coyote stepped into view 30 feet away. He seemed unconcerned, not just with the intense human habitation all around him, but even the intense human right in front of him. I hissed, and he ducked away.

Then not one, but two squirrels almost climbed into my lap, in the course of whatever before-bed routines they were pursuing.

As a Zenner who sits outdoors whenever possible – it's a form in my hermit practice – I've had countless similar experiences with wildlife. I've also used this technique intentionally, with lost or traumatised cats and dogs; nervous horses; and at least one refractory laughing dove.

The grace of these encounters never ceases to thrill. For a brief instant I'm freakin' St. Francis.

Very brief, to be sure. But a flash of kensho all the same.

And a reminder that true warriors are silent and watchful.


(Photo of a true warrior courtesy of Wikipedian Petr Novák and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Summer rest stop

(Stopped for a rest on a long bike ride the other day and noticed the picnic table pretty much told the whole story. Helmet, gloves, granola bar, Alan Watts' autobiography. These are the sweet days of summer.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: 2024 teeshirt

(Every summer I issue myself a new teeshirt. Here's this year's pick.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Street Level Zen: Attainment

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

Abraham Lincoln

(Photo courtesy of Radek Skrzypczak and Unsplash.com.)

WW: Mummified crab

This hand-sized specimen of Puget Sound kelp crab (Pugettia producta) quite startled me on the high tide line, far from its habitat on the low tidelands, till I noticed that it was completely dead and dry. Probably thrown up there by the waves, then dried by the sun in this lifelike posture.

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Swordsmanship

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

I've recently been pondering this Philip K. Dick line. A lion of literary science fiction, Philip's life was dogged by mental illness complicated by drug use. This led, as such things often do, to a fascination with metaphysics and transcendental philosophies. And an enduring preoccupation with reality, that thing human brains are singularly ill-suited to detect.

Perception challenges notwithstanding, I think the writer wields a sharp Zen katana here. We humans are especially apt to mistake ourselves – our cultural assumptions, our half-experienced experiences, the truisms we were taught as toddlers – for objective truth. "That's the way of the world," we say. Or, "That's just the way the world works."

Problem is, we're not talking about the world, or anything like it, when we say that. Far less any rule the world may impose.

For the benefit of those still struggling with the concept, let me take a page from Philip: the world is that thing that remains, unmoved and unchanged, when the last of us has died.

Which could be rather soon, at the rate we're going.

I find this principle a productive "empty" meditation. You know, those paradoxes we Zenners like to chase on the cushion as calisthenics for our power of perception:

"Picture an empty mirror."

"What was your face before your grandmother was born?"

"Mu."

So I sit and imagine a planet millions of years hence, unmarked by human striving.

Endless global landscapes that bear no trace of our passing.

The utter inexistence of economics or religion, art or technology, love or hate. And the profound absence of any recording witness whatsoever, anywhere on the planet.

An Earth returned to the ground of being, removed that single self-centered force of denial that dominated a second of its lifecycle, its pan plumb flashed out.

As Philip conjectured: a vast and infinite reality, entirely innocent of human delusion.


(Photo courtesy of Vadim Mivedru and Unsplash.com.)