Reclusland

Sometimes, there’s not much at all to these unfinished posts.  This one for example, is just a few links, all about just relaxing and letting the dust settle around you.  Or maybe not…

First off, an article from the NY Times about how it’s good to let babies eat a little dirt.  This apparently trains their immune system, acclimatizing it, so to speak, to its locality.  How cool is it that our instincts are already set up to make this happen for us, and how crazy is it that we seem to think we know better?

The article goes on to explain that the immune system at birth “is like an unprogrammed computer. It needs instruction.” (note that, computer as metaphors for the mindbody system).  And explains that “this does not suggest a return to filth, either. But…bacteria are everywhere: on us, in us and all around us. Most of these micro-organisms cause no problem, and many, like the ones that normally live in the digestive tract and produce life-sustaining nutrients, are essential to good health.”

So, a little dirt is good for us, eh?

And what do the monks have to say about it?

Although it involves neither Shaolin nor the Wu Tang, there is a Zen story that fits in here rather well.

While still a student (or possibly before even entering into the order), Huineng, the sixth zen patriarch (a favorite here at Reclusland) wrote a poem that earned him pretty much instant graduation from the monastery (based on the condition that he went away and never came back):
Fundamentally bodhi is no tree
Nor is the clear mirror a stand.
Since everything is primordially empty,
What is there for dust to cling to?

This was in response to a poem by the senior monk of the monastery:
Our body is the bodhi tree
And our mind a mirror bright.
Carefully we wipe them hour by hour
And let no dust alight.

A little uptight, no?

So Huineng, nowhere near as practiced as that head monk, still managed to surpass him by recognizing that it’s probably best not to worry about every piece of dust.  Buddha-nature’s pure and primordially empty anyway.  If dust can alight on it, it’s not buddha-nature.

Now, from what I know of Zen, things probably didn’t happen exactly like that; to receive that kind of acknowledgment from an abbot doesn’t happen from just a really snappy comeback.  My guess is that the story was maintained in the tradition because it teaches a deeper story than that.  The point being, again, that Buddha’s middle path to enlightenment cannot be followed if one worries about every little thing. Let the little baby buddha’s chow down on some dirt clods.  They’re buddhas; it’s in their nature to do that…

Another reason for which Huineng’s story was so important was that he is considered the founder of the “Sudden Enlightenment” (頓教) Southern Chan school of Buddhism. That is to say, before him, the way to get enlightened was to sit and meditate, study the sutras, and wait a really long time.  Lifetimes.

After Huineng, there was accepted the possibility of suddent enlightenment, enlightenment in a flash, Saul-on-the-road-to-Damascus-style.  One way to look at this is a kind of lucky enlightenment.  It all depends on your karma, I suppose, but something prompted Huineng to seize the opportunity of writing up a response to the head monk’s poem when no one else would…

What is it that makes us open to this kind of “lucky enlightenment”?

Ask Prof Robert Wiseman:
“Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected.

As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.

Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.”

That link is to a short article by Wiseman published in The Times of India.  And it’s not just his opinions, he’s got experimental data to back it up!

A longer article in Newsweek also features Wiseman’s work, but in typical American fashion, they kind of miss the point.  The article’s title is “What It Takes To Survive”, which completely misses the whole “be relaxed and open” part of the equation.  Typical fearmongering to sell magazines, I guess, but it’s still an excellent read.

So the moral of the whole story is: Relax.  Be here now.  It works, but only if you don’t worry about it too damn much!