What is the essence of Zen?

Just now I was sitting at the kitchen table taking a break and reading - I hope I never have to live without a kitchen table and real paper books - and Tashi came up, which she is allowed to do when there's no food on the table. A boundary she likes to test, as she likes to come up when we're doing weekly meds and try to claim the box.

I was done reading and about to go downstairs and put some clothes in the dryer.  When I closed the book, Tashi strolled over and looked at me, and I thought, What does the little cat want? Sometimes something scares her and she needs a good cuddle, and comes over, looks in my eyes, then reaches up to put a paw on my shoulder.  I gather her in.  A few minutes on a shoulder - she's so soft, almost a ragdoll - and then I can settle her on my heart.  When my arms get tired or my back starts to hurt,                                                                     I persuade her down onto my lap.

So I waited to see what she did.  She walked over on her little cat feet and stretched down to put one foot on my thigh, then launched to the ground and off to whatever she had in mind.  I thought, Sometimes you're a mom, sometimes you're a ladder.  Whatever the little cat needs. Within reason.

It's the principle of serving. The Bodhissatva of Compassion is often depicted with many, many arms, and in each hand something useful.  A friend who is the active mother of two little ones recently named off the things she keeps handy:  tissues, cellphone, bandaid, juice box . . . on it goes.  Quan Yin in t-shirt and jeans.

Kanzeon - her name in my tradition - is the compassionate one who hears the cries of the world. In my everyday life it's more like being open to the whispers, receiving so you know what to offer the little cat or your daughter or yourself.  It's right there, I think.  Not that it's simple.

Once a friend and I were walking quietly after lunch through a park.  Jean Marie, who has a degree in horticulture, indicated a tall old pine I'd noticed was somewhat yellowed.  "That needs iron," she said.  She saw the condition and knew what the tree lacked.  It takes noticing.  Mere knowledge is easy to come by these days - I wouldn't be surprised you could snap a picture of the tree, send it to some site, and they'd tell you what kind of tree it is, and what it needs. Strolling quietly and noticing the tree - that takes practice.

The Perfect Woman

There once was a bar in Columbus with a sign like this; maybe it's still there.  It hasn't been long ago that I drove past it and wondered why no feminists have ever defaced it.  After all, it means to depict the perfect woman in the context of thinking that women talk too much. 

I don't think that's just a cute joke.  I don't think it's merely about talk, but about a woman's place, a kind of systematic demeaning of women that is fundamental in patriarchal cultures, that is, pretty much all human societies.  Without going into the complex historical reasons for this, I will note that in the animal kingdom, sheer size and strength win.  And we are animals.  But we are also human beings and can do better than that. 

In patriarchy, women are silenced.  Are supposed to quietly serve men.  Are not supposed to have opinions. Can women think?  Should we?  What are we entitled to think about?  Should we have opinions?  Make waves, get equal pay?  Patriarchy knows the answers.

What is the opposite of the silent perfect woman serving a man?  Perhaps it is a gentle, loving man who is in no way aggressive.  What would he look like?  Not a castrati, I don't even want to think about depicting that.  I have never seen a pub sign like the above that would show a man mutilated in such a way as to make him a woman's ideal, and don't want to.  So how would I depict him?

Maybe he would look like this.....

Jesus as the good shepherd.  Maternal, long lovely hair, wearing a dress.  Okay, gown.
Or maybe the perfect man looks like this.....

The Dalai Lama. I could not quickly find a full-length portrait of him, but as you know, he too wears a dress.  Alright, gown.

As for a depiction of a perfect woman, I like the ideal of Kuan Yin, Kanzeon, Green Tara in various branches of Buddhism - the buddha of compassion. We ourselves have a statue of Jizo in our little Zen garden, who I believe is sometimes male, sometimes female, a quiet little patron saint of travelers and lost children.  Here she is, in fall color.  She wears a robe and carries a staff with little rings that jingle quietly as she walks, to let animals know she is coming and means no harm.

This is a personal issue for me, this thing about strict gender definition.  I wish I'd been taught that it was okay for a girl to be smart, to think.  I had to fight my way through a thicket of thorns on that, and to my surprise, sometimes I still do.

A Note on Serious Practice

Red reflected at the OSU Field House

I have been fully employed since Monday afternoon with (da-dum) The Grandson.  He's here in Columbus staying with us for his second year at OSU Basketball Camp.  This has been a great experience, eating out (on his mom's dollar), doing origami together, playing Wizard, showing each other favorite YouTube videos.  Baked store-bought cookie dough that was lurking around in the frig.  Rode to and fro to OSU with Tom driving the van and me and Otto in the back seat, chatting, sometimes him messing with my phone - a nice Samsung with big screen for playing the latest update on Angry Birds Seasons. 

We celebrated his half-birthday (June 25 - it's terrible to have your birthday on Christmas) with an iTunes gift card and two tee-shirts on sale at the OSU store. He and I figured out how to make Heywire (free text service) work.  It is so good to be a grandparent.  He is polite and respectful to us, no need to battle with us about anything.  We don't have to push nutrition - they harangue the kids about that at the camp. (Lunch on Day One is always, horrors, salad day.)  I don't care if he doesn't hang his towels up for a few days; but if he lived with us, we'd have to deal with things like that. 

This morning Tom and I sat for half an hour in the stadium and watched the assemblage as the teams (eight of them, I think, grades 6-9) gathered and were instructed in the art of paying attention to the coach, or *Coach* himself, who gives brief, hard-hitting talks.  Thad Matta's story of working with a really bad back is actually very inspiring.  Serious sports is a discipline as stringent as Zen.  Coach talks to the kids twice a day, and you don't see him limp.

He would suddenly say "Two claps," and everyone better clap sharp and right on time; and louder.  The lesser coaches did it too, sometimes going up and down, one clap, three claps, no claps.  I told Tom we should do this on Zen retreats; it's fun.  What they have done on retreats we've been part of as the week wears on is chant Kanzeon, in Japanese.  This is short and rhythmic and is repeated seven times, getting louder and faster - with the wooden drum, as I recall.  It dissipates stuck energy, and energizes.  Tom and I especially like the part when you shout enthusiastically, "Go butsu!"  Maybe someday we'll get our act together and record ourselves or our Zen group doing it.

I could have spent the rest of this short day on YouTube looking at chant videos.  I found one of Japanese baseball fans chanting, but not many of Zen chanting.  Zen does favor silence, or the long, slow meandering talks by the Teacher. 
I learned a lot this week about how good sports can be for kids: discipline, paying attention, and most of all, submitting to failure over and over again; and practice. You shoot how many baskets to get one? I don't know, but as a poet, it is inspired me to go get more rejections. And it makes my short daily meditation look pathetically easy.