The Man Who Licked the Banana & Zen Buddhism

I stood perplexed, watching the man sitting in his shiny black shoes and blue collared shirt as he held his banana (peel still sealed) in both hands, licking it on the stairs inside Grand Central Terminal.

I did my best not to judge.

“Look away,” I told myself. “To each their own…”

“Don’t judge,” I told myself. “Alan Watts is in your bag. What would he think of you?”

Of course, in thinking not to judge, in trying not to look, in thinking about what he was thinking- I had already dug myself into a deep hole.

In my attempts to try and understand the Buddhist nature, I have inherently failed at Zen... and I imagine Alan Watts looking down at me, head thrown back, laughing as he watches me highlight the pages of his book.

Simply put:

“In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don’t wobble.”

And I’m quite wobbly, I must admit.

If you don’t get it, try this:

           

            One does not criticize a pig for having a neck shorter than a giraffe.

Not an animal lover? Don’t worry, because:

           

            What is therefore to be gained from Zen is nothing special.

And

In studying or practicing Zen it is no help to think about Zen.

If a man seeks the Buddha, the man loses the Buddha.

Anyways, the Buddha is our natural state and everything is the Tao.

And while so simple, I’m wobbly. I have confessed.

For it is such a paradox for me to practice living free; for if you need to practice, you are, therefore not living free.

I try to understand and in trying, I do not understand. ---->

Last night I wrote about the empowerment of women. I spoke of the women who are abused in the Congo. My stomach hurts.

I find myself judging myself-

Reflecting on how empowered I feel during yoga and how I carry that with me after I walk out of the studio.

What about the women in the Congo, and other parts of the world, who don’t have that freedom?

I feel ashamed, for some time, of the pictures I have posted of myself- sharing my empowerment, encouraging others to find their space.

Who am I?

For others do not have that freedom.

But, “No” my mind turns on itself.

I won’t let “them” (society?) take me down (“try” to take me down?) too.

 I will walk for them.

For there will come a day when they, too, will be free.

They have not lost themselves. I hear their voices from the City of Joy when they say “move your feet.”

Eve Ensler said it last night. 

An African proverb says it too:

            When you pray, move your feet.

Chelsea knows.

Zen is the “liberation from the duality of thought and action.”

It is living spontaneously.

If you are having trouble understanding (we all are), this is what helps me:

Think about a time in your life when you just did something without thinking. For me it is jumping out of an airplane, singing in the shower, running down Bedford Road with music blasting in my ears,  or laughing with my Salvadoran children beneath the waterfalls. It is quite impossible for me to remember those moments without feeling the same sensation of pure bliss.

All of those situations required not an ounce of trying. The non-duality of thought and action; 

just being.

That is Zen.

It is also like this:

The pain I felt hearing the news last night about the Congo. The fear I felt when that poor man pulled the gun on me in Antigua. The sadness I felt at my grandmother’s diagnosis.

That, too, is Zen.

For me, to my understanding, Zen is the natural state. It is a state that exists when we do not try, when we do not think, when we just be.

It is not getting upset about the pain or being afraid to express the fear or questioning the sadness. If those things just happen, they just happen.

And so:

            When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep.

I can’t say stop thinking, because in trying to think, again you have fallen into the paradox of Zen.

To the logician it will of course seem that the point at which we have arrived is pure nonsense- as, in a way, it is. –Alan Watts.

But is it not also a bit non-sensical that we let society determine our jobs, our social class, how we dress and who we select to be our friends on Facebook? Who controls this life we live?

Zen is, in a way, pure nonsense- but I wonder about those women in the Congo- how their lives are so much more determined by spontaneity, without choice. They know what is real, where reality does not exist.

They “don’t need our help” they just need to be able to move their feet again.

To them, how non-sensical it would be to read Alan Watts, The Way of Zen! Yet, I wonder, if they are already living it- so much more than we.

For, when hungry eat. And when tired, sleep.

…And, here in “our” world, conditioned by the group, we often skip meals and deprive ourselves of sleep.

Unfortunately, you cannot be intentionally unintentional or purposely spontaneous, and so, here I stand in the hole that I began to dig when I started this blog.

Perhaps, all that is left to do, is grab an unpeeled banana and lick it.