Appreciating the Least Thing

Impatiens self-seeded by my sidewalk

The moon is serenely shining up in the sky, and she is alone in all the heavens and on the entire earth; but when she mirrors herself in the brilliant whiteness of the evening dews which appear like glittering pearls broadcast upon the earth from the hand of a fairy,--how wondrously numerous her images! And is not every one of them complete in its own fashion? This is the way in which an enlightened mind contemplates God and the world.  God is immanent in the world and not outside of it; therefore, when we comprehend the secret of the "little flower in the crannied wall," we know the reason of this universe.
Soyen Shaku
Zen for Americans

The above is a description of the panentheism of Shin, a Buddhist sect that incorporates features of Shinto, an ancient Japanese nature religion in whose internet  manifestation I've been wandering this morning.  There I found the amulets below, which you can buy to protect your pet.  The love of our animal companions has become obvious with social media, which sometimes seem dominated by pictures of cats.  (Guilty as charged.)  My own UU church has a group devoted to compassion for animals; many American Buddhists don't eat meat out of that compassion, following the precept to do no harm.  I notice that many of the same people campaigning for mercy to animals are also involved with recycling, reuse, and sharing.

 It is also interesting to me that amulets are traditionally returned after a year to the temple, to be burned in a ritual way, part of the respect for all phenomena that also causes the temple to sell recycle bags.

There seems to me to be lots of room in this country for a religion that supports the love of nature.  In fact, the warming of our climate, finally agreed upon by every major scientific group, is telling us we need to cherish nature much more than we do, and stop cutting down trees to manufacture disposable (paper) towels.  When I was a girl, they didn't exist.  My mother used rags, like everyone else, made from worn-out clothes and linens not good enough to go in a quilt.

We are meant to extend the same kind of caring to ourselves, as well.  Americans - overworked, badly fed, sick from spending our whole lives sitting - have a special need to adopt self-care in the face of commercial interests that want you to think a powerful new car or great vacation or ED pill or new shoes or bacon pretzel burger or more money or winning the game will make you happy.  Not so.  Not for long. 

An alternative to the dissatisfied consumer life is the poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson referred to above:

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

To entirely understand a flower, root and all, qualifies as an epiphany, or awakening, if you like.  It's a grander awakening to understand ourselves the very same way.  For this, you have the serious practice of zazen.
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p.s.  Or course, I always notice when the word "man" is used to mean "humankind," which would include the, uh, fair sex, woman.  This dates from times when women indeed had no civil rights, and were seen as sexual objects and helpmeets.  I didn't have a chance to talk with Lord Tennyson about this. 

Living well, living good

"Living well" usually means, I think, having a life rich in excellent material things and sensory delights - great restaurants, very good clothes, a villa on a hillside in the Mediterranean, faithful servants.  It used to make me think of luscious bouquets of cut flowers until I read about how cut flowers come our way now by jumbo jet from sweat-shop greenhouses.  Maybe that flower thing is a good example of the difference between living well and living consciously.  Living well is done on the backs of the poor.  And without regard for the cost to the earth.  Somebody mines those diamonds.

But my example today is so much smaller, and takes place in a pretty humble Mexican restaurant, where one waitress struggled to serve our long table of friends gathered for after-church brunch.  I happened to sit near Rick, whose vegetarianism grows out of his compassion for animals.  We talked about his list of vegan restaurants here in town, which is a surprise to me; Columbus is often called Cowtown (see photo above), a hit on not being too hip. He gave me a piece he copied recently about the cost to the environment of the American addiction to lawns.  I thought for the hundredth time about how we could dispense with our stupid lawn.  At least we hire an organic service, a guy who cares about the earth, and whom we really like.

Then comes time to package up what we didn't eat of our meals, which are always too large here in America - you know about that, I bet, how obesity has become a national problem.  Think about that.  Reminds you of the degenerate Romans and their vomitoriums.  The waitress brought me a little styrofoam box; what was left of my lunch will be my lunch tomorrow.  And for about the hundredth time I thought about bringing my own plastic containers to restaurants.  I told Rick, "Styrofoam is a blight on the environment."  He nodded, wrapping a piece of quesadilla in a bit of tinfoil.

Now, why wouldn't I carry a few Glad boxes in the van?  We eat out - at modest places - at least once a week, and I usually bring food home.  And I usually shake my head at the expense of styrofoam, which is made of dino juice, I believe, and involves a lot of manufacturing and is slow to degrade.

Why don't I do that?  Because I would feel self-conscious doing it.  It's bad enough to not drink in America, which our movies tell us was founded on alcohol and greed, and still seems to live up to that model at times. . . .

But I digress.  So I'm going to stop here and go put a few containers in the van, and then sit down to watch the evening news, which will show me much worse problems than my own small fascinating problems with principled nonconformity. . . . Meanwhile, I'm wondering if our zoning will let us have a herd of sheep in the front yard.