Saying For Today: Nothing you have done or anything about you provides blessing other than what passes through you as a gift. So, please keep your hands off who you are and what you do; otherwise, you contaminate it all.
'A Stream Being A Stream'
river de chute... easton, maine
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Shunryu Suzuki -
I have often talked to you about a frog, and each time everybody laughs. But a frog is very interesting.
*Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.
If you cannot access the video here, it can be viewed on the original site via the upper left vocalist-title...
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Suzuki Roshi was fond of frogs. He compared a frog sitting to us when sitting in meditation. So, in whatever position we are in during the Silence, we behave like the frog. The frog is quiet, present, and calm. If a fly flies in front of the frog, the frog can capture it quickly. Yet, the frog remains like a frog.
Hence, the key to sitting and living like a frog, Suzuki Roshi said, is what I call not-anything-special. Your spiritual practice, all of it, is nothing special, and you are not special - that is our fitting attitude. Your life, whatever you do, whatever you think you have accomplished or plan to, is not extra-ordinary - compare the frog to capturing the fly, natural, nothing-special. And you do not stand apart or above anyone or anything.
Yet, when you are modest-in-spirit, not ascribing any specialness, not wanting something special, you can see your life - our life - for what it is - a miracle. So, when you embrace not-anything-special, Life shows itself. Hence, only the humble-in-heart see Life for what it is - very special.
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After receiving two Master's and a Philosophy Doctorate, I never put them before others to see. I stored them away in a box. Even in my office, I did not expose the degrees to sight. A few persons would call me Doctor Brian. I appreciated that, for they spoke it to respect all the years and hard work invested in education. Yet, if asked, I would let persons know I preferred to be called Brian or Pastor. So, others would call me Pastor Brian or Pastor.
However, even in such apparent modesty, one can get caught in specialness. One can, then, think she is special by denying specialness.
Instead, rather than trying to be or appear unspecial, there is a wise way. This middle way releases the tension of effort to be or not be anything. We neither try to be special or not-special. We engage the Way without concern about either. We see whatever we do as not-special and not-not-special.
Now, we are like the frog. The frog is being a frog, that is all. You are you, so you are being you, that is all. So, not-special means just being like a frog without trying to be like a frog. Yet, to get to this natural, authentic spontnaeity, we may have to engage in trying to act like a frog. If so, we practice to be like a frog.
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So, once you accomplish something, you do not claim it for yourself. You do not belong to yourself either. Nothing you have done or anything about you provides blessing other than what passes through you as a gift. So, please keep your hands off who you are and what you do; otherwise, you contaminate it all.
Then, hands-off, being like a frog, you see the miracle that is. And the joy! of not needing to be someone spectacular or do anything extra-ordinary.
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Suzuki Roshi spoke of this nothing-special of someone doing zazen [sitting meditation] while the spouse is resting in bed. Many in mediation would think she is doing something special, while the spouse sleeping in bed is doing something un-special, or just-ordinary. No. In Life, sleeping and meditating are two ordinary activities. Hence we cannot say, in anything we do, "What I do is special? What she does is ordinary?" Now, what appears special to you is not special at all - it just is.
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Again, when you see this way, you see something you did not see before. What is that?
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2021
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, especially Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the teachings and imagery in the poetry.
