Walnut Meditation

A Zen monk related a story.

“Before becoming a monk I was an English teacher in 8th grade at an Experimental School south of Chengdu in Sichuan, China. One day I held up a walnut. What is this?”

They answered in Chinese.

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? Mothers and fathers protect their children and keep them safe. Now you are 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 the front row.

“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 of the room 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.”

“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 poetic girl named 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.

Weaving A Life (V4) - paperback and/or Kindle

Giving Back on The Road

June was from Stockholm, Sweden. She visited Cambodia for a month. 36-years young.

She was a tight bundle of burning anxieties. “I don't know what I’m running away from. I don’t know what I'm running toward.”

A traveler talked about Angkor temple labyrinths as an allegory of life.

One door opens and one door closes but the passages can be a bitch, whispered a Cambodian ghost.

June had evolved as a willing victim of old lies. She'd believed lying authority figures; family, husband, boss and friends. She’d believed old controlling attitudes and belief systems of others.

Her new day in Cambodia offered opportunities for awareness and growth. Like other humans, to become authentic she’d eventually face her deepest fears and shadows. Either that or keep running scared with a hellhound on her trail.

“I want to cut all my hair off,” she said in Siem Reap. It was long curling blond movie star mane quality. She went to a salon. She was nervous. She swallowed hard. A woman cut it off.

“I feel lighter now, transformed.”

June altered her outward appearance, releasing old anxieties. By cutting her hair with bright shiny silver scissors as a symbolic gesture, June realized how she felt was more essential than how her stone cold colleagues in stone cold freezing Sweden might react. It was a small significant step on her new path. 

One day she experienced the influence of a remote Khmer village on her consciousness. She visited My Grandfather’s House 53 kilometers from Siem Reap. They’d converted a two story building into a school.

“What do you need?” she asked the village chief.

“We need clean drinking water.”

She bought a water purifier.

“We need electricity after 6 p.m.”

She purchased a battery so they’d have lights after dark.

Another day, returning from Angkor she stopped in a village. She met children. The next morning she invited a traveler to join her. She purchased bags of toothbrushes and toothpaste. They rolled through dry brown flat countryside and palm trees past simple stilted bamboo homes, women selling, cooking, cleaning, washing and working.

They were far away from a neon town filled with tourists doing Angkor Wat.

June talked a blue streak, unloading her honesty, hopes and dreams mixed with anxieties and fears, “I feel good doing this. I've never done anything like this before. My past life was all about anger, problems and conflicts. Now that I’m in Cambodia, what, less than a week, I’m beginning to learn about myself, seeing how my life was empty with no meaning. How it was all about pleasing others, buying useless things to make myself feel better.”

They turned onto a thin dirt track leading to a bamboo thatched home in a field. Half-naked kids played. Women and men rested in shade. June met the kids and a young mother.

“Here,” she smiled, handing them toothbrushes and toothpaste, “these are for you.” They were amazed. An 80-year old woman, a former Apsara dancer, performed quick delicate hand movements. June copied her to the delight of everyone.

“I’ll be back,” she yelled as kids waved goodbye. 

“I now feel more fulfilled.”

They stopped in a market village for coffee. Young girls selling small colorful bamboo paper birds descended on them. “Buy something? Look at my things.”

June met Leaf, 13, in the 5th grade. Leaf learned English selling to foreigners at temples after school. She taught village kids English.

“I saw a leader in the girl’s eyes,” June said. “Maybe I can help her, get an English teacher for her village. Give her an opportunity to really grow.”

June had to modify her dream for the girl. “Let's be practical,” the traveler suggested, “finding a Khmer English teacher for $40 a month in this area is like finding clean drinking water.”

The next day June bought a brand new pink bike for Leaf with a bell and basket. It said, NEW STAR on the chain guard. She went to a bookstore. She bought a whiteboard, markers, 20 English learning books, picture dictionaries and storybooks. She loaded them on a tuk-tuk and returned to the village. Leaf, her family and friends were waiting. They raised pigs, dad kills them, mom sells the meat in the market, older sisters hope to find a foreign boyfriend, get married, and escape.

“Here Leaf all this is for you,” said June. “The bike will help you get to school, temples and home. The whiteboard, markers and books will help you teach English.”

Leaf smiled. “Thank you.”

Leaf pedaled through dust and brown broken leaves around the house. June spread the books out. Kids explored new images, words, ABC alphabets and colors.

“I feel real good about this,” she said returning to town. “Real good. I’ve made a small difference in a young girl’s life. I am so grateful.”

***

On another toothbrush run June traveled along a remote dusty red road. She stopped at a bamboo shop selling small bags of soap and bananas.

A young girl wore a permanent tear on her left cheek. She was not smiling. Her t-shirt had a picture of a skull and bones.

Danger! Mines!

She said to June: “Here I am. I communicate my reality to the world. Do you like my shirt? Can you read words or do you need a picture? How about a picture of a picture? I don’t know how to read so I like to look at pictures. 

"My country has 14.5 million people and maybe 6-10 million land mines. Adults say there are 40,000 amputees in my country. Many more have died because we don’t have medical facilities. Mines are cheap. A mine costs $3.00 to put in the ground and $1,000.00 to take out of the ground.

“I’m really good at numbers.

“26,000 men, women and children are maimed or killed every year in the world by land mines leftover from ongoing or forgotten conflicts. Reports from the killing fields indicate there are 110 million land mines buried in 45 countries. It will cost $33 billion to remove them and take 1,100 years.

"Governments spend $200-$300 million a year to detect and remove 10,000. Cambodia, Angola, Iraq, and Afghanistan are the most heavily mined countries in the world.

“40 percent of Cambodian land is unused because of land mines. One in 236 Cambodians are amputees. A prosthetic limb costs $3,000.

“Talk to me before you leave trails to explore the forest. It's beautiful and quiet. I know all the secret places.

"I showed my picture to a Cambodian man and he didn’t like it. They call this denial. He said it gave him nightmares. He’s seen too much horror and death in one life. So it goes. My village is my world. Where do you live?”

June's humbling life changing experience woke her up in Cambodia.

Above the 45

Above the 45 post by David duChemin contains this gem.

"In the artist’s life there are two axes: on the Y axis is challenge (or opportunities), on the X is ability.

"When the opportunities we take equal the talent or ability we have, we are living on the 45-degree angle formed between the two. Perfect balance, and generally, to put it into blunt terms, stagnation.

"But when the opportunities we create or seize seem to outpace the talent or ability we have, we grow in that ability to meet the opportunity, and are living above the 45."

Expand, evolve, explore, take risks. 

 Full post.

Julia writes from Sweden

Greetings,

I received a wonderful email from Julia today to share with you. It's direct, honest and filled with her humbling life changing experience in Cambodia. She's amazing. I'm grateful we met in Siem Reap.

"Home again.

"Time flies when you're having fun and so I find myself back in snowy Sweden a month after I left. I have however, returned a completely different person, one I really like. 

"I have learned to appreciate the value of a pair of Tom Ford sunglasses, $440 - or 2 years of university-tuition for my friend Lina in Phnom Penh. A pair of Marc Jacobs', $325 - or 4 months rent on a decent house for a family on the outskirts of Siem Reap. A pair of seasonal Armanis, $100 - or two waterfilters that will provide 2 families with ten years of clean drinking water. And that's just the shades. Insecurities are expensive. 

"When I changed my mind I also changed my hair. I cut it all off along with enormous amounts of baggage. Turns out, underneath all that hair I'm cute, fun, kind, smart, interested and interesting, generous, loving, caring and very, very happy. Who would've thunk it? 

"Tim has become my mentor and he guides me towards myself. I am writing down the bones. 

"I have learned that in Cambodian traffic one relies purely on the force. Which is easier to locate once all the buzzing stops and you start focusing on the right now. If you try to think about anything in the past or in the future you will get hit by at least one moto. I know, I tried it. Twice. Navigating through the craziest jams becomes easy if you pay complete, relaxed attention. Life is "same, same - but different" as the tourist t-shirt reads. Mine reads "I heart Cambodia". 

"I have learned that a landmine costs $3 to put in the ground. A prosthetic limb on average $3000. 

"I have learned that a government-employed teacher in Cambodia earns about $40 a month, a privately employed teacher can earn twice that. 

"I have learned that with a little help a family can make some extra money raising butterflies. 

"I have learned that papaya and lime is an awsome combination, that amok is delicious and sweet and sour fish soup is even better, that coconutwater is best had out of a newly cracked open coconut after my new friend Mo climbs up the tree to get it for me, that Angelina has good taste in drinks and that Chin's mom can cook a fantastic feast on a nail. 

"I have learned that I can be useful and that I am needed. My life is no longer an empty search for anything to hold on to. My purpose has found me. I am greatful I decided to go to Cambodia. I am greatful I went despite second thoughts. I am greatful to all the beautiful, inspiring, wonderful people I got to meet there. I am greatful that I could be of service. I am greatful for the lessons I learned. I am greatful that this happened at a time in my life when I am open to change. I am greatful that I am out of the dark. My life is the light and I am living it intentionally. 

"All the rest is just detalis. I'll fill you all in when inspiration finds me."

Love,

J

 Julia and her village kids.