{"id":28933,"date":"2021-08-22T14:29:15","date_gmt":"2021-08-22T21:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/?p=28933"},"modified":"2021-08-22T14:29:15","modified_gmt":"2021-08-22T21:29:15","slug":"the-work-of-change-a-zen-reflection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/monkeymind\/2021\/08\/the-work-of-change-a-zen-reflection.html","title":{"rendered":"THE WORK OF CHANGE: A Zen Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In the literature of Chinese Buddhism<\/a> there\u2019s a lovely little story that hints at some of how we can encounter change in ways that might be helpful. It may not immediately be obvious, but let\u2019s hear it, and then unpack it together, just a little. With that we can consider whether it points us true.<\/p>\n

The Zen master Changsha took a walk. When he returned to the entrance of the monastery the head monastic asked, \u201cTeacher, where did you go?\u201d Changsha replied, I\u2019ve come from walking in the hills.\u201d The head monk asked, \u201cAnd what did you find?\u201d The teacher responded, \u201cI went out following the scents of the grasses, and I returned to the falling blossoms.\u201d The head monastic sighed, \u201cAh. Spring.\u201d Changsha smiled, \u201cIt\u2019s better than autumn dew falling on lotus leaves.\u201d Later one commentator summed the matter up, saying, \u201cThank you for this.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\nI\u2019ve always loved this little story. Changsha lived into the middle of the ninth century, although this anecdote is collected in the thirteenth century anthology of such stories, the Blue Cliff Record<\/em>, as case 36.<\/p>\nAs I think about those grasses and their scents, about autumn dew and those lotus leaves, I find I am invited into the actual lived moments of our lives. The ones that seem in fact to be all about changes. And digging in, all about transitions, those moments when we might notice changes happening, and then what they tell us about who we are.<\/p>\nFor a lot of reasons of late I\u2019m finding myself reflecting on all the transitions in my life. Big changes like those shifts from childhood to adolescence to my several adult lives. For me changes through monastery and school and marriage and work. Zen student and then Zen teacher, and of course, blessedly, back to Zen student. And also, very much, the different ministries I\u2019ve been invited into. Each presenting as a moment, but also manifesting rhythms and cycles as well as totally new things.<\/p>\nI\u2019m aware how important moves were to my personal growth as a minister. Each time I was able to pause in the rush, reflect, and incorporate what I learned in previous ministries. In ways we don\u2019t often allow ourselves or are allowed by those around us without something as big as a move, in my case involving crossing the country one way or another several times.<\/p>\nI\u2019m also aware of how congregations have similar experiences of change. Those changes of ministerial leadership, or, giving up or acquiring ministerial leadership, acquiring properties, growing or shrinking membership, lots of things. And each offers moments to become new again. Well, perhaps more insistent than offering.<\/p>\nIt isn\u2019t all beer and skittles. Actually, most of the time, change is hard. It might be good. It might be important. It might even be critical. But it is hard. Almost always. This is true whether we\u2019re encountering change as a personal thing or in some communal way.<\/p>\nAnd maybe that\u2019s a problem with that old Zen story. The image it calls forth for our lived lives are those smells of the grasses and falling blossoms. Certainly evocative. Certainly true. However, sometimes the smell is of a garbage dump. And what falls is putrid. There\u2019s that.<\/p>\nThe other part that story ignores, is how most of all we humans really, really like stability, constancy. We don\u2019t like diving into the motion of it all, the shifts and the changes. Most of us, most of the time, we don\u2019t like change at all. And so, we resist. So, there\u2019s that.<\/p>\nAnd. But. However.<\/p>\nThe Buddha of history, Gautama Siddhartha, asserted bluntly our grasping after the permanent is not only folly, it is the cardinal cognitive error. Wishing, or worse, actually believing anything is or can be permanent, is the broad gateway to human hurt. Internally through our desire being constantly thwarted by, well, by reality. Or, outwardly, when people decide they need to enforce their visions of a world not changing onto others. Or to eliminate others that display the ways people do in fact change.<\/p>\nI think of this experience of shifting and changing as the great buzz. Sometimes we encounter it as anxiety. Sometimes it just hurts. Sometimes, it\u2019s even thrilling. Sometimes it\u2019s the smell of wild grasses. Sometimes it\u2019s the smell of puke. It is the great is-ness of our lives.<\/p>\nAnd, paying attention we find within all this something else is revealed. This is the work of change. It\u2019s one of those big secrets hidden in plain sight. Truth be told, we actually only exist within those transitions. One moment after another. One, if you will birth after another. We are not nouns. We are verbs. We think we\u2019re particles, but we\u2019re waves.<\/p>\nAnd. But. However.<\/p>\nEven knowing this, when we really do know this as more than an idea, the buzz of that motion for most of us remains an uncomfortable thing. Our whole lives we\u2019re always off balance. The enlightened heart, the awakened heart, doesn\u2019t become something else. It discovers itself, ourselves, as nothing other than this buzz.<\/p>\nHow should it be otherwise? After all, noticing change we also notice all things end. And not very well hidden in that is the whisper, you too, I too, will die. All things composed of parts come apart. Look at us in our precious and fragile uniqueness; talk about a composition of so many things. And at the same time those many things themselves are constantly shifting.<\/p>\nI look at who I was as a child, and as an adolescent, and the many different me\u2019s adulting, and except for a constantly evolving geography, my body as a place, and a ghost of a sense of continuity, it is in fact all always shifting, changing, mutating.<\/p>\nWe are change.<\/p>\nSo, what does the work of change look like?<\/p>\nOne bit of wisdom comes to us from Taoism. For ages I was sure this little story was actually one of Zhuangzi\u2019s immortal tales. He\u2019s the guy who told the butterfly story, somewhere roughly five hundred years before the birth of Jesus. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve heard it. Someone wakes up and realizes they\u2019ve just been dreaming they were a butterfly. Then, a moment of uncertainty as they realized they could just as easily be a butterfly dreaming they\u2019re a human. That guy.<\/p>\nAt some point I decided I needed a citation for this story I\u2019m building up to, and looked it up. Not Zhuangzi, it turns out, but that other ancient worthy, anonymous. Whatever, this story certainly conveys the wisdom of the water-course way, and if not by Zhuangzi, by another member of the family. Again, you may well know it. The story goes:<\/p>\nOne day a farmer\u2019s horse ran away. His neighbors said, \u201cHow terrible.\u201d To which he replied, \u201cWe\u2019ll see.\u201d The next day the horse returned bringing along three wild horses. The neighbors said, \u201cSuch good luck.\u201d The farmer replied, \u201cWe\u2019ll see.\u201d The next day, the farmer\u2019s son fell while trying to tame one of the new horses and broke his arm. The neighbors said, \u201cSuch terrible luck.\u201d The farmer replied, \u201cWe\u2019ll see.\u201d The next day an army marched through pressing all the young men they encountered into their number. But they left the young man with the broken arm alone. The neighbors said, \u201cSuch good luck.\u201d The farmer replied, \u201cWe\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nJust like with the dreaming butterfly, you\u2019ve probably heard this story, too. It\u2019s part of China\u2019s cultural heritage that somewhere in modernity has become part of our collective human wisdom. \u201cWe\u2019ll see.\u201d Things happen. Things change. And, well, what\u2019s to be? We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s of course worth digging a little into the heart of that \u201cwe\u2019ll see.\u201d<\/p>\nFirst, off there\u2019s some good news. While we exist as something constantly changing, we are also in all that motion part of something rather wonderful. Here is the wisdom that is pointed to in the Zen story I cited at the beginning, that part about autumn dew falling on lotus leaves. Better is a bit of a joke, because the image of lotus leaves is pointing to the place out of which we arise, the boundless, and the open. There are no differentiations within openness, only potentialities. No better. And no worse. It is the mystery that is at the very same time all this change that is around us and is us.<\/p>\nSo, the work of change. Allowing the open, the boundless as also part of who we are, then we notice a new wrinkle in the mess of things. The truth, as Martin Luther King Jr sang into our hearts, is how \u201cIn a real sense all life is interrelated. (We are all of us) caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.\u201d<\/p>\nI dream of that garment of destiny. I feel in my blood and bones that network of mutuality. It\u2019s not just a good idea, a rather sweet metaphor for some ultimate connection, but a pointer to something we can know it our bones and marrow. It\u2019s why Zen. It\u2019s why all the mystical traditions of the world. It\u2019s the autumn dew. It\u2019s the lotus. Our endless possibility. It is our true nature, which is wild and open and boundless.<\/p>\nI no longer suffer under the delusion there is some magic part of me apart from the mess of life, untouched by causes and conditions, and not subject to change. At the same time, at the very same time, yes there is a thread of self-awareness that calls itself James. Absolutely. I am here. You are there.<\/p>\nEach thing, each you, each me, in its moment is real. But this real is also a dream, gossamer, feather light, floating. And this is so important; that\u2019s okay. It\u2019s all dreams. Butterflies and humans. And puke. And falling blossoms. Dreams all the way down, into that boundlessness. We can enjoy the scented grasses because we know the autumn dew. We are intimate and we are creativity itself.<\/p>\nIt is out of this dance of reality that Martin Luther King sings, \u201cWhatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.\u201d<\/p>\nIt\u2019s all intimate. Hurt and joy. So intimate. Longing and love. Intimate. Verbs and nouns. Particles and waves. One thing manifesting in a hundred million, million ways. Intimate.<\/p>\nThis acknowledged, known, embraced, I\u2019m not in favor of just sitting back and waiting. It is a \u201cwe\u2019ll see\u201d universe, no doubt, absolutely. We need to take time and just notice. The arts of meditation are part of that. But at the very same time we are also called, called by our very lives and our astonishing ability to see and to act to make choices, even when it\u2019s hard. Again, Martin Luther King. \u201cThis is the interrelated structure of reality.\u201d<\/p>\nWe are what we do. Actions matter. Small and large. Changes are invitations. To, as the philosopher said, pay our money and take our chances. Me, I\u2019m all in favor of trying to put our hands on that arc of history, bending it toward something better. That\u2019s the invitation. That is the moment now. In small ways and large. It\u2019s our work.<\/p>\nAnd it isn\u2019t easy. As Raymond Chandler\u2019s character observes in the \u201cLong Goodbye,\u201d \u201cTo say goodbye is to die a little.\u201d Truth. Absolutely. Change hurts. This work can hurt. And yet. Another Zen line: and yet.<\/p>\nMy friend the Zen teacher Mark Strathern notes how the irritant is what makes the pearl in the oyster. How we meet the irritants, how we meet the changes, how we face the flux, well, that\u2019s what makes the pearls of our lives.<\/p>\nThe truth be said, we mostly miss how we are connected to the world and to each other. But graced with these moments of change, we can find the ways we\u2019ve become estranged from our lives. This moment of transition, well, it\u2019s an angel appearing, making some wonderful announcement. When we open ourselves to these shifts as the liminal places they are, then, well, magic is in the air.<\/p>\nChange becomes possibility.<\/p>\nThe good kind. The kind where we own our lives. And where we put our hands on that fabled arc of history. In small ways and large.<\/p>\nThis is where we become who the stars and galaxies named us from before our births.<\/p>\nDynamic. Open. Connected. Intimate.<\/p>\nThat\u2019s the work of change.<\/p>\nAmen.<\/p>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/y0ltYApM_tk\" title=\"YouTube video player\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 THE WORK OF CHANGE A Zen Reflection August 22, 2021 Delivered at the First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles James Ishmael Ford I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about changes. And with that the nature of change itself. 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