Here at the Prairie Zen Center in Champagne, we sit in a room meditating facing a wall for 4 or 6 days. In zen parlance, its called a sesshin, or meditation intensive. Something similar to what the original Buddha was doing sitting under a tree. However, using simple math, our 5 or 6 days is far short of the Buddha's 49, so there are no illusions that anyone is going anywhere or achieving enlightenment or anything. But of course, there is really nothing to achieve. Its right there in front of us waiting--you just have to eat the rat turds.
I found out about the rat turds on day three of the retreat. Though the retreat involves a lot of silent meditation (typically about seven hours a day), each day in the afternoon, the periods of quiet mediation are interrupted by a half hour dharma talk by the teacher (Elihu) to assist with the the otherwise silent mediation period. Sometimes there is a brief question and answer period as well. The dharma talk of the day concerned the "Heart Sutra" which is the fundamental chant/mantra in Buddhism--something like the "Our Father" of Christianity. It goes in part, like this:
All things are empty:
Nothing is born, nothing dies,
nothing is pure, nothing is stained,
nothing increases and nothing decreases.
So, in emptiness, there is no body,
no feeling, no thought,
no will, no consciousness.
There are no eyes, no ears,
no nose, no tongue,
no body, no mind.
There is no seeing, no hearing,
no smelling, no tasting,
no touching, no imagining.
There is nothing seen, nor heard,
nor smelled, nor tasted,
nor touched, nor imagined.
There is no ignorance,
and no end to ignorance.
There is no old age and death,
and no end to old age and death.
There is no suffering, no cause of suffering,
no end to suffering, no path to follow.
There is no attainment of wisdom,
and no wisdom to attain.
The dharma talk from the teacher explained our relation to the Heart Sutra using a metaphor that we are like a perfect stew, but we throw rat turds into the stew from our own suffering. That hit a nerve with W. one of the meditators who reacted like a bolt of lightning exclaiming: "You cannot mess it up. It is perfect. So many times in my childhood I have been told the same thing but I know now that you cannot mess it up." And the words came from her heart and were true, you cannot mess up the stew, but having spoke this truth, the stew was full of rat turds. For like life, Zen has it both ways, and it unfolded before me that Friday at 3:00 pm in the afternoon: Elihu and Wendy parading side by side in perfect union.
And then the drama continued. Elihu telling W, "enough." And it was not enough for her. She went on. For she had also studied with Joko Beck, Elihu's teacher. And she lashed out at him in ways that might have hurt basically implying that he was no Joko Beck, that Joko would not have made the same mistake he did of thinking you could mess it up and then Elihu retorting that it was not what he is saying that is what is written by the zen masters, and then W without missing a beat saying that the zen masters are dead and it is all about the living right here and now. And I saw the emotion in what W was saying, and how much it could have hurt Elihu, and how I do that to people as well, throwing rat turds around indiscriminately.
And how then, in this silent retreat I went up to W and thanked her for the "blessing" and she looked at me strange, and not just because I spoke, but because it was a blessing, it was a rat turd, and I will eat them with pleasure, in or out of the stew. Its all we have.
