The Wall is Enough: Zen’s Cornucopia

Preface

I welcome by name readers from Buddhist, Christian and secular backgrounds, but all others as well. The following piece is a balance between the named traditions though I intend it for all. Sometimes we need to meet each other’s imagery as mirrors offering a new perspective on ourselves. I will be using the imagery to the best of my abilities, such as they are. I am sure of one thing, within this doubt, that there is a sacredness even in the “ordinary right now”.

A horn of plenty

“Enough is a feast” — Buddhist proverb

The Dharma is written on all things, the word written on human hearts. A cosmos is reflected within ourselves and those around us.

This is necessarily how things must be in order that we live in a reality where enlightenment is available to all. Fortunately, this is something that can be and, in fact, is experienced. Every moment.

Whether we go to sit for zazen, pray or practice doing our daily activities mindfully, we do not receive any reward above and beyond. We receive exactly what we have or are given. That is enough, and is in fact what we all long for. A longing to be free from longing’s absolute control, if not longing’s presence.

So, when I sit or kneel in front of a wall, I receive exactly that. A wall. To the quiet mind, the wall is enough. It is not so much that one finds joy in the wall, though this might happen and that’s okay. The wall abides and joins us in our sitting, just as much as we join the wall in its sitting.

And, even as we drop away gently from self-awareness (even if just a little), we may glimpse something true. The wall, right now, is enough. This wall, right now, is a life lived to its fullest. That it is gone the next moment, replaced by a descendant, is irrelevant. For one brief moment, a wall burns brightly, becoming imperceptible ashes not to be found in the next moment. Unto itself, ourselves included, it was an entire perfect world.

We sit in meditation, not to gain something in the rest of our lives, but because the wall, also, is enough. If you cannot sit with a wall, how can you truly sit with a friend? Ironically, because we sit without a gaining thought, we gain everything. A life that otherwise would be veiled in our own ignorance. Even ignorance itself is transformed, we are safe and we were never not safe.

Prayer too, depending on interpretation, reveals a hidden abundance already provided in accordance with God’s will, in which we find our home. This is not a God that withholds spitefully if not pleased, this is a God that bids you to recognize the seats at the table reserved for all, for all time. Sit, if you would like.

A cornucopia awaits in the ordinary now, always.

This grace is irresistible. Whether we realize enlightenment, or persist in our ignorance, the cornucopia is there. Ever just enough is exactly plentiful. Even the humble wall echoes the horn’s song. But then, don’t all things, even yourself?

Does this mean we should seek walls and only walls? All things contain the essential teachings. When waiting by the microwave, wait as if it were your last act, the promised land of food left to your descendants to enjoy. For now savour the hum of the oven, the pressure under your feet. No need to savour them, they are selfsavouring. Just give them room to breathe. Let yourself be given breath.

A hymn lies in wait for the ages. A chime resides in Emptiness. Even now the causal connections propagate in preparation for its coming. Beyond words, and then face to face.

Receding back into awe, the Divine presence, Emptiness, the moment was exactly what it was, that which we needed most.

Passing into no-thingness. That which brought forth, brings forth anew. The cup overflows as the bell is struck. Loaves are multiplied once more as the sangha assembles. The ten thousand things may be at peace reflecting the light of the full moon.

Reprise

This piece is centered on the ordinary. I take to heart that Zen practice really is grounded in a universal enlightenment, that is, all people share in this wondrous being before us. For a secular reader, Carl Sagan might point out that we are starstuff, that the laws of physics on the grandest and smallest scales apply to us with equanimity. A cause for wonder and delight. A Christian reader will recognize the grace of God suffusing all things, whether it is accepted or not.

For me, the ordinary has to be enlightened, fill us with wonder and embody sacrament. If not, it seems that a gnawing darkness slowly engulfs our lives, steadily convincing us of the triviality and unwantedness of some things, and encouraging mindless obsession over and desire for other things. This is nihilism, creeping in from both directions obscuring the true nature of things, destroying them. Yet destruction is not truly in the deceiver’s power. How can it, a deceived sibling itself?

I say.

No being left behind.

Ions flow just so in a mysterious dance and a being is wonder for a moment.

Sentient beings are numberless, we vow to save them all. The Buddha mind welcomes wonder as its own, undivided, part of its great activity.

All beings are suffused with grace, since the foundations of the Earth, the Spirit working wonder in their midst.

Together: The Cosmic Mystery, Buddha, God. The Unnamable viewed three times through the lens of the human heart.

But suddenly, back to the world we never left for our most solemn work. Have you had the waffles? They’re divine. A mindful sip of steaming, fragrant tea. The distant stars squash up against the window and make faces.

I do not mean life is absurd, not always. Just this, we need to be ready for anything, because everything is coming our way. Even unreadiness. But amongst all these things, anything can be ordinary. Nothing special. Ordinariness can be many things. If we can abide in the ordinary, be the ordinary, we are ready for everything, we are ready to become anything. Didn’t you just? To be ready for anything, we need to be ready for just this.

The ordinary right now is both a grave matter and a delight. It is also exactly simply what it is. This is the life you have been given, you cannot pass through the eye of the needle. But you have been given a body, the body, not a mere body. How does a limb respond in gratitude if gratitude is not always with us? If there is no time to think? I think, with such questions often the answer lies in also asking questions like how is it possible not to respond if there is no time to think.

Not unthinkingly.