More Water Please
One day, while I was in Crete, I had the impulse to write something on a note pad. It seemed so meaningful that I decided to tack it on the wall of my little room, and it became a daily reminder for me to ponder:
Somehow, the sense of urgency still escapes me.
Like most young men and women at 36, I thought I would live forever, but, most of us can feel beyond what the intellect thinks, that there really is an urgency always present behind the veil of everyday life. Years later, I remember how stunned I felt, at the end of a silent 10 day retreat when I heard that Princess Diana had been killed in a car crash. How could someone so beautiful be crushed to death in a speeding car, trying to escape pesky paparazzi? But then, how could young John F. Kennedy Jr., so full of life as he carried the legacy of his father into a future that promised such greatness, die with his wife in a small plane lost in a storm? And just this week, we ask, with incomprehension, how indominatible Kobe, a man so gifted, could die in a helicopter crash as he traveled with his lovely daughter to her basketball practice? Such an utterly normal day ending in tragedy. How is it that in spite of the relentless evidence of our mortality, the sense of urgency still escapes us?
Forty years after Crete, I wonder at the wisdom of the words that young man tacked on the wall of his room. Who was it who thought those words and wrote them down? Was it a thirty-six year old Victor, facing, for the first time in his life, feelings of fear, longing and loneliness? Perhaps, but I tend to believe that those words came from what Jung calls the Self, some unknowable, ungraspable presence that abides both within and without each of us. If you prefer to call it Soul, I would not disagree.
I have the smaller version of a Keurig coffee machine,“smaller” meaning that the water tank holds only enough water for four or five cups of coffee or tea. When I bought it, the smaller size seemed perfectly okay to my irrational mind, which thinks it only drinks one cup of coffee a day. Unfortunately, the rest of VB drinks three and, sometimes, even four cups of coffee a day, not to mention the tea I often make for a few clients. So, over the past few years, when I place a K-cup of Peet’s French Roast coffee into the machine, a little sign often appears indicating, More Water Please. My reaction is invariably surprise, mixed with a little irritation, and if I really admit it, even a twinge of anger. “What? Again? I just filled you up a few hours ago!”
Life is relentless, isn’t it? It never stops demanding more water please, and I think its relentless demands are what actually trigger my irritation, “What? You need more water?” Something inside longs for a little respite, a vacation, a break from the relentlessness of our day after day after day reality. Something longs for a break from the mechanical nature of reality, which seems blind to our small personal needs, especially when we feel bone-tired and depleted.
Gravity is not personal, nor is it particularly kind. It pulls everything down to earth, or to be more precise, it pulls every object down to earth. Chins, breasts, buttocks, pyramids, helicopters, and cathedrals crumble or sag because existence relentlessly pulls all objects back to the earth and to their beginning. It’s true that a few remarkable people manage some temporary “deal” with gravity’s relentless pull back to earth. There are amazing dancers who manage to stretch legs and arms at the exercise barre day after day, year after year. A few football players last into their early 40’s and some yogis astonish us with gorgeous, lithe bodies in their 60’s. In Memphis, Tennessee, I once sat and listened to Pablo Casals draw gorgeous sounds from his Cello when he was 91 years old. But our range of motion inevitably narrows because, in the end, no one beats Mother Nature. In the Bare Bones of the Buddha’s Teaching, I suggested that this is precisely what the Buddha realized. Not only is it impossible to beat Nature, it’s stupid to try. In the Bare Bones I quote May West who supposedly said, “Honey the only way to beat nature is to show the bitch who’s boss.” Only a clueless ego thinks it can show the bitch who’s boss.
So how do we manage our lives in the face of relentlessness? Does one “rage, rage against the dying light”? Or do we go gentle into that good night? as Dylan Thomas asks in his beautiful poem. I suspect that too many of us simply ignore the whole charade, and gradually sink into the ever-so slowly and seductively heating water, like unsuspecting lobsters.
In Swampland Flowers, my favorite Buddhist teacher, Ta Hui, urged his meditation students to get serious about their inner work, asking them to,
1) find urgency where there is no urgency;
2) get busy where there is no pressure;
3) find importance where there is no importance.
Imagine teaching those words to a child! How does one find urgency where there is no urgency? How does one get busy when there is nothing pushing her to get on with it, no term paper due at the end of the quarter? And why should we try to find something important beyond all the important responsibilities, such as income tax day coming in April, that we must face every single day of our lives?
The old Zen masters were relentless about this. They never stopped shouting the very words we least want to hear, words intended to create a sense of urgency. “Time flies more swiftly than an arrow,” they said. “Life and death are matters of supreme importance,” they said. And the Christian tradition agrees, “Sleepers wake! A voice is calling.” In Ecclesiastes 9:10 the writer says, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.” Ta Hui was more blunt, which is probably why I love him. “On the last day of your life don’t blame me if you end up like a lobster in boiling water.” Not exactly something to tell the little ones in kindergarten.
When I first read Ta Hui’s three difficult admonishments, I remembered Crete and that little piece of paper with words written in green ink tacked onto the wall. “Somehow the sense of urgency still escapes me.” Finding urgency where there is no urgency was precisely what confounded me. I could feel something so alive and urgent each day as I walked by the Mediterranean Sea, and yet, in some way it was a vague sense hidden behind a veil that offered me no real direction or path.
Earlier, I said that gravity pulls every object back to its beginning. As far as I can understand, gravity is an excellent metaphor for reality. It just is what it is. We can hate it, ignore it, or be taught by it, but it remains what it is, impervious to who we think we are. A long time ago there was a great teacher whom I will call Mr. Real. His more common name was “Buddha,” meaning an awakened one. He described reality as having three characteristics: 1) Nothing is permanent, which is to say that everything sags, crumbles and finally deteriorates. 2) because nothing is permanent, there is not the slightest possibility of some permanent “me” existing inside my mind. 3) To the degree that I deny this fact, I am bound to suffer as sure as night follows day. Did someone mention the word, “urgency?”
Let me offer a little fantasy-story about Miss Emily Dickinson that would have occurred nearly three thousand years ago. Imagine that she has joined the Buddha’s great Sangha, as one of the nuns who have recently been allowed to become fully ordained Buddhists. (I think Ananda persuaded the Buddha that it was not exactly seemly to prevent his mother from becoming a nun, thus opening the door for Emily.)
Sister Emily is having an interview with Mr. Real as he teaches the three characteristics of Reality. She asks ever so politely, “But shouldn’t you tell it slant?” The Buddha responds with equal deference and kindness, “Slant?” Please define “slant.” Sister Emily tells the Buddha that in order to teach Truth to children, one must speak in a circular manner. Otherwise, Truth can be too frightening. Just as our eyes can be permanently damaged by looking directly at the sun, Sister Emily suggests to the Buddha that he must tell the truth slant, indirect, oblique, and offer subtle hints to children who are afraid of the dark. The Buddha asks, “What children? Are you referring to Ananda or Sariputra? Mahakasyapa or Subhuti?” I think this might put even Emily in her place, and perhaps she had nothing more to say in the face of such an an impressive list of enlightened men. But in my fantasy, I would have been standing near enough to whisper in her ear, “Please tell him that even three thousand years from now, most of us will still have ‘child-minds’ still struggling to grow up. We will still get angry at machines that demand, ‘more water please.’ We will hate anything that reminds us that nothing and no one lasts forever, and we will hate life’s relentlessness, especially when we fell tired and depleted.
I think the reason the Buddha would not have been able to understand Emily’s meaning, (however shocking it may be to suggest that the Perfect One might not understand a psychological concept) is precisely what Jung meant when he said that early Buddhism was “pre-psychological.” In other words, the idea that many of his listeners were mostly “child-minds” in big bodies would have been completely foreign to the Buddha. It would have sounded like nonsense. Needless to say, I imagine that it would have also sounded like nonsense to that long list of enlightened men.
My inclination is to say that Emily’s suggestion of circuity and telling it slant comes from Feminine wisdom. It is Archetypal. After all, who is better equipped to understand the child-mind than its mother? The Buddha’s brilliant light is the very essence of the male Archetype, Logos. It is direct and penetrating. “Penetrate,” by the way, is a word U Pandita, used to describe mindfulness (unfortunately).
Before ending my fantasy, allow me to add a favorite word of Jung’s: “circumambulation.” Rather than diving into the interpretation of a dream, (penetrating it) or using association to discover its hidden meaning as Freud encouraged, Jung asks us to circumambulate our dreams; walk gently around them, just as worshipers might walk around a temple. A silent thing unfolds its mystery only in the presence of deep respect.
When Andrew posted the Letter from Crete, I had occasion to reread it a number of times. What has been so palpable, as I read and remember, is to feel the sweet presence of a child-mind. Victor was 36 years old at the time of writing that letter, but emotionally? In some ways he was barely 16 years old, and, in other ways, not much older than a 23 year old. One thing is for sure, as he walked by the Mediterranean Sea and pondered so many ideas in his secret cove, he could not understand that much of what he experienced and thought was filtered through a child mind. When the weather got bitter cold in Crete that winter, Victor watched the sun rising across the Sea, “Where is that?’ he asked in broken Greek. “Egypt” was the answer. Within three days he had mailed his letter to a friend for safe keeping, and found himself sitting on a plane to Cairo.
It has taken a lifetime to understand that Crete, for me, was a confrontation, sometimes almost too harsh, with the truth that I was mostly a child living in a grownup body. “Confrontation,” by the way, implies that one has begun to watch oneself with some clarity. Humility is not exactly redundant in a child mind, but it is the sine qua non for one who seeks to mature. However less controlling it is in my life today, the child-mind remains, as it must in all of us, because it is our best part. It is that same child-mind that I wish Emily could have explained (with appropriate slantness) to the Buddha so long ago.
Yesterday, a client recounted a dream he had the night before our session. He began by saying
“I had a dream last night,” and I asked if perhaps the dream had had him! He smiled in understanding. The dream was about an older, nurturing woman who was offering him some fruit, still covered with soil. To me, our mutual circumambulating the dream was secondary to the reality that something had visited him, and that he had been nurtured by it, as if washed by something entirely beyond our imagination. The change in his demeanor was palpable; he was lighter and seemed to have a glow about him. In that moment, it occurred to me that beyond all the high-toned words we could use to describe the fascinating symbols in his dream, its deep and intriguing meanings, the important thing was the nurturing that had come unexpectedly from an unknown source.
So I come back to my Keurig coffee maker at the end of this essay. While the child in me is irritated with a machine’s request for “more water please,” I realize that this is how every child reacts to demands on him or her, especially when a child feels depleted of its own supply of self-goodness. In the main, I am grateful to be reminded over and over that I must tend to that which needs more water. As I mentioned in a previous essay, James Hillman calls experience “soul food,” but lately I tend to think that soul food is, in fact, Truth Food. Perhaps that is what Hillman meant. I believe that the sense of urgency that escapes us is nothing but the gentle whisper of the soul asking, more water please. When we do not listen and ignore the soul’s urging, that whisper can becomes deafening, and even deadly. Truth is what replenishes the soul and is its living water. Even in the driest of times, and perhaps, mostly in the driest of times, unexpected moments can wash over us, when suddenly, as is said in Isaiah, “The desert shall rejoice and blossom forth as a rose.”
