Above me a crow’s wings warble in the wind, hovering. Beyond its black frame a bright blue sky smeared here and there with small clouds. Soon the train will lurch from this station, and I will be on my way.
One of my favourite kōans, Rinzai Zen riddles whose meaning emerges rather than is discovered, is this:
Hyakujo went out one day attending his Master Baso, when they saw a flock of wild geese flying.
“What are they?” Baso asked.
“They are wild geese, sir,” Hyakujo replied
“Where are they now?”
“They have flown away.”
Baso, abruptly taking hold of Hyakujo’s nose, gave it a twist. Overcome with pain, Hyakujo cried out: “Oh! Oh!”
Said Baso, “You say they have flown away, but they have been here from the beginning.”
Has the crow left us, or have we left the crow? What does this have to do with ‘liberation’, the theme of this month with CEC and this essay, and can I get to it by the time this train arrives in Montreal? If time and pressure birth essays and universes, maybe freedom too.
Or is it freedoms, in the plural? Tiny instances, shards of a bigger inheritance that we can glimpse in our mind’s eye or feel in our bodies when the questions fall away. Like Hyakujo saw of the geese disappearing into specks on the horizon, and that Baso reminded him of with his painful twist. In this way, freedom is not finding a moment where everything makes sense, it is calling off the search for the sensible.
Freedom from what? Into what? In Buddhist framing, you might hear the word ‘dukkha’, a word often translated as ‘suffering’. I don’t like that translation, particularly as it is the entry point for the First Noble Truth in Buddhism, life as dukkha. Life is so much more. It is crows and the wild geese, and the train lulling my neighbour so his lids blink ever more slowly as he drifts into sleep.
A much better interpretation for dukkha is ‘at times unsatisfying’. Marrying the love of your life, and everyone you know is in that room. You landed the dream job for more money than you thought possible. Your wedding dress gets caught under the chair and tears. There is talk of a European company interested in yours. The train ahead of you has derailed (true) and you will be indelibly late to your rendezvous. The biopsy comes back and your oncologist tells you it is time to get your affairs in order. Have the geese flown away or have you? To where?
Dukkha. Unsatisfactoriness. Your grave before it even arrives.
If this is the truth of life, can we ever be free?
Yes. As we let go of a search for freedom. Or liberation or immortality or whatever word is as far away as the perfect wedding or train ride and begin to understand what we actually hold as incredibly more perfect because the million happenings have been smithing it from the beginning.
It is why we practice mindfulness. Not to get anywhere, but to be. Baso grabbed Hyakujo’s nose just as the chair grabbed the corner of the dress.
Not up there.
Here, on a train with nowhere to go.
One of the three paths to liberation is ‘aimlessness’, calling off the search. It is not the acceptance of the present moment so much as understanding its completeness. And its stakes as fulcrum and lever. If you don’t move your dress from under the chair leg, it will tear further. If you don’t look for other work, you may need to move. Getting your affairs in order is a parting gift to those you love. Watching the world drop bombs pulls you on the slow train to Montreal and the MSF annual meeting so those people on the ground will watch medicines landing too.
Hyakujo’s story continues:
The next day Hyakujo attended an informal teaching given by Master Baso, where a few monks had gathered. Hyakujo stepped forward, rolled up Baso’s prostration mat and put it away.
Baso got down from the lecture seat and returned to his room, followed by Hyakujo.
Baso asked: “I went to the lecture hall, but why did you put away the prostration mat before I had preached anything?”
Hyakujo said: “Yesterday the Master caught me by the tip of my nose, and it was very painful.”
Baso said: “Yesterday, we walked along the fields.?”
Hyakujo said: “Today my nose no longer hurts.”
Freedom is not over there. It is not an anodyne experience, death or sadness or aging delayed. It is right here. It is knowing the moment and what it contains.
That is what we will be working on this month with CEC, sitting with it, noting it, riding it, watching it go. We will work on expanding our awareness to include questions and dissatisfaction. It is all allowed.
Oh. The train has stuttered forward. The track has cleared. My neighbour is awake, blinking sleepily at the passing trees.
And the crow is right where it always has been, riding high in the rolling air underneath him.
*****