Walnut Story

A Zen monk related a story.

"Before becoming a monk I was an English teacher in an Experimental High School near Chengdu in Southwest China. One day I held up a walnut."

“What is this?”

They answered in Mandarin.

I wrote “walnut” and “metaphor” on the board. “This walnut is like a person I know, very hard on the outside. They are very safe and secure inside their shell. Nothing can happen to them. What is inside this shell?”

“Some food,” said a boy.
“How do you know?”
“My mother told me.”
“Do you believe everything your mother tells you?”

“Yes, my mother always tells the truth.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s good, but I wonder if mothers always tell their children the truth. Why? Because mothers and fathers like to protect their children and keep them safe. Especially young children. Now you are in high school and developing as a more complete and mature human being. It’s good to question things and find out the truth for yourself. Do you understand?”

Some said “yes,” others nodded passively.

“This walnut is a metaphor for the self. A symbol. The self that is afraid to take risks because they are “protected” by their shell. Maybe the reality is that the shell is empty. How do we really know what is inside.”

“It’s a mystery,” said a boy.

“That’s right, life is a mystery. How will we find out what’s inside?”

“You have to break it open,” said a boy with poetic aspirations.

“Yes, you or I will have to break open the shell, our shell, break free from the shell to know what is inside. That can be a little scary when we are conditioned and comfortable carrying around the shell every day isn’t it?”

“It’s our self,” whispered a girl in front.

“Very good. It’s our self, this shell and the mystery. We have to take risks and know nothing terrible is going to happen, like trying to speak English in class.”

“If we don’t break the shell we’ll never feel anything,” said another boy.

A girl in the back said, “it means it’s hard to open our heart. It’s hard to know another person and what they are thinking, how they are feeling.”

“You got it,” I said. “We’ll never experience all the feelings of joy, love, pain, sorrow, or friendship and miss out on life.”

This idea floated around the room as I juggled the shell in my hand.

“I know people who grow very tired every day from putting on their shell before they leave home. It gets heavier and heavier, day by day. Many carry their shell into adulthood. It’s like wearing a mask. They look alive but inside they are dead. But eventually, maybe, something important happens to them at the heart- mind level and they decide to break free from their shell and see what’s inside. They say to themselves, ‘This shell is getting really heavy and I’m so tired of putting it on and carrying it around. I’m going to risk it.’”

I smashed the shell on the table. It splintered into pieces. Students jumped with shock.

“There, I’ve done it! I smashed my shell. Can it be put back together?”

“No,” they said.
“Right, it’s changed forever. The shell is gone.”
I fingered small pieces of shell, removing them from the nut.

“See, it’s ok. Wow! Now it’s just an old useless shell. It doesn’t exist anymore. It’s history. It will take time to remove pieces of my old shell. Maybe it’s fair and accurate to say the old parts represent my old habits, behaviors, and attitudes. It happened. From now on I will make choices using my free will accepting responsibility for my behavior. And, I know nothing terrible will happen to me. I feel lighter. Now I can be real. That’s the walnut story.”

“Well,” mused a sad serious girl named Sylvia Plath, “I believe every living object; seed, flower, tree and animal has an anxious soul, a voice, sexual desires, a need for survival, and feels the terror at the prospect of annihilation.”

“Language dreams itself."

A Century is Nothing

Artificial

Facts and truth have nothing in common.

It’s a blessing to understand another human being without words.

I hang laundry near the street. Memory’s lie is tempered by talking monkeys. Two boys harvest trash. One barefoot boy plays silent music with a long thin bamboo fiber. The other twirling a walking stick used for prodding garbage carries a plastic bag. Papa’s got a brand new bag.

Local people mill around. Milling around is an art form. They exist with a pure innocent childlike wisdom. Passive is their inherent Buddhist nature. They’ve suppressed their ego. Ease god out.

Others voice imaginary alien freedom ideas.

I am Other. I live in my heart-mind luminous universe.

A sofa with a roof on wheels towed by a motorcycle carries fat white Europeans to see 8th century Angkor temples.

They are the look and leave people. They are too busy passing through life to feel anything.

Eternity, a young handicapped man wearing his new skin-tight artificial plastic left leg and foot shuffles through dust. He walks home. It is everywhere and nowhere. You can’t go home again. 

1100 BC

My forward observer position witnessed young and old sexually repressed Catholic couples steal kisses at night under yellow street lamps. Hiding in recessed Moorish doorways getting a quick feel. Passion with a purpose.

My meals with a Gypsy family timed down Gades days with a simple breakfast of toast, butter, jam or muesli, a lunch of thick soup, fresh salad, bread, water, and a main course at 2:30 p.m.

I read Don Quixote...true history...the crux of fiction, harder to read than fantasy.

We live in a world of forms.

It was shifts, frequencies, and transitions moving from pre-terror North America to North Africa and old Southern European worlds in September 2001.

Everyone was connected by history in the making: Phoenicians, Romans, Berbers haunting conquests, establishing bases in Europe, Moors fighting Christians, morphing cellular structures.

In Andalucía they exchanged belief windows, values, attitudes, construction projects and 3,000 years of icon free Arabian art. It was about agriculture, water, light, form, and substance.

Equality was the word at a Muslim burial exhibit at the Mondragon Palace in Ronda.

Phoenicians discovered Cadiz in 1100 BC. They called it Gadir and traded amber and tin. It was a Roman navel base.

Greeks and Phoenicians introduced the potter’s wheel, writing, olive tree, donkey and hen to Spain. They replaced iron with bronze. Metals became currencies.

People developed agriculture as populations built walls, towers, and castles for security. Romans contributed aqueducts, temples, theaters, circuses, and baths. They gave the Iberian Peninsula Castilian language based on 2,000-year old Latin.

Their desire, wanderlust and greed established communities to satisfy their impulse for cuisine, sex, music, and trade expanded their nation-state.

The Museo de Cadiz was filled with Roman artifacts. Humans wandered through archeological epoch discoveries from settlements in Gades along the coast extending inland to Seville and Cordoba.

Travellers discovered estuaries, towns, villages, isolated tight white pueblos and rooms full of coins, maps, heads, pottery and faces. They examined vases, dynasties, ruins, Roman legion armor, burial sites, aqueduct maps, temples, theaters, masks, busts, sculptures, marble, glass, and utensils.

Three million-year old human remains slept in stoned chambers. Sharp sewing bones rested in dust.

I dissolved anger, desire, jealousy, pride, and ignorance in the wake up.

Weaving A Life, V1

Jungle Story

Once upon a time in the long now there was a continent, a landmass floating on water. White barbarians called it Asia on dusty maps. Deep inside Asia were vast lands, rivers and mountains.

Overtime, a historical bandit with a reputation for laughter, magic, fear, superstition, and an insatiable appetite for diverse languages and cultures lived in jungles and forests.

Jingle, jangle, jungle.

Using natural materials villagers created musical instruments, simple weapons, homes, fish traps, snares and looms. The women had babies, wove cloth and prepared food while the men fished, planted crops, domesticated animals. Children played and learned life lessons from nature with extended families. 

One day a boat filled with white men sailed up river to a village deep in the jungle.

They wore shiny clothing, spoke a language the people could not understand and carried weapons that made a lot of noise and scared everyone. They pretended to be friendly by offering gifts. The leader of the village welcomed them. They had a party.

Every day more white people came up river on boats named Destiny. They were on a quest for gold and slaves. Owning, using and discarding slaves had proven to be an essential part of their evolution on other continents.

Their mantra was: cheap labor, cheap raw materials, cheap goods, cheap markets and much profit.

White people said, we are civilized and you are savages. We have religion. It is called Wealth & Greed. We are on a mission from the great chief. We control people. We control nature. We have machines. We take what we want.

The village gave them hospitality, shelter and friendship.

The white men took control of the village, people and jungle. Every day the white men marched their slaves deep into the jungle singing, “We control Nature. We shall overcome.”

They spread diseases. They planted fear. They planted envy and jealousy. They manipulated villages against villages. They divided people against people. Divide and conquer. History taught barbarians well.

They harvested wealth in the form of people, precious stones, rubber and every raw material of value. They were never satisfied. Their appetite grew and grew.

If we want to survive we have to move to a new jungle far away, said the village shaman.

This is the story they told their people one night below stars singing with their light.

Whine Me

Greetings,

The 1st Provincial Whiner Convention got under way today, hey say children, "Can you whine with the best of them?"

"Yeah man, I started whining when I found out, being an only child in a one-child takes all crap game, that whining is a fantastic way to get things you want," said Faceless. "I wanted a lot then and I want more now."

"That's nothing," said Insecure, another whining contestant. "Whining is a fine art in my book. I've never read it because I'm lazy but I know how to whine with feeling. I've had practice. I practiced on my parents, practiced on my grandparents and now I practice on my friends. A little whine here and there works wonders. You ain't never get any good at whining in life without practice."

A whine went up from the crowd.

"We want a REAL whiner. These are fakes. They have no skill, ability, creativity or enthusiasm for whining. Send them back to Whiner Elementary. They are whining failures. Poor."

"Ok, ok," said Maladjusted, a whiner with a degree in Manipulation.

"How's this?" and they started yelling and screaming, contorting their face into tears, stamping their feet demanding instant gratification.

"Give it to me now! 
"Give it to me now! 
"Give it to me now!
"I will whine until you give it to me!"
"I am a spoiled brat and I demand you to give it to me NOW!

The crowd gratefully swallowed the passive-aggressive whining performance.

"Not bad," one whiner said to another whiner. 
They voted with their feet to Whiner Street to practice whining in public.

Street Eats