Zenderella, a Story of Impermanence & Orthopedic Footwear

It's a good thing you're sitting down. There is indeed new art. Not entirely new. ... Started some time ago but just finished this past week. I finally found some studio time and have even started something brand new that with any luck might just appear this coming week. Eek there's a break neck pace for you! You've heard of slow food. This is slow art. I marvel at those folks who can just knock them off, hardly pausing for a breath. But it's not my process. I stare. I sit. I apply a little paint. Another colour, some shading, adjust a line or two. Hours pass without notice. You've heard of slow learners, well I'm a slow creator.

I have a funny Zen master story to tell. Last night we had dinner with friends, christened a new kitchen, welcomed a newcomer to our country with a little toast (no jam) and generally had some fun. It's a group where foolish stories are told and lots of laughing happens. Enough to scare the resident cat and dog (but only a little).

One of these friends helped us move some furniture from my mother's apt. We donated some things to a political party named after a colour which were taken away in a gardener's truck. At the time I gave my friend a bag which contained a few small things for our mutual friend, the Buddhist monk. One of the things was a pair of slippers that had belonged to my mother. The final unloading of furniture and bags happened in the autumn darkness.

When my friend took the bag of goodies to our monk, a cinderella thing happened. There was only one slipper in the bag. And as in the cinderella story, the slipper fit perfectly. She definitely wanted the other one. Slight variation on the cinderella story but as he spun the story we appreciated it heartily. "What is the sound of one slipper, slapping?" I asked We groaned and hooted. My friend continued the slipper saga. The morning following the missing slipper incident he checked with the gardener whose truck he had borrowed to see if a slipper had been spotted. Much scurrying of gardeners followed as they searched for the Zen master's new slipper. No effort was spared to make the final retrieval which apparently involved a little dumpster diving. In the end the slipper found it's way to it's rightful new owner who liked the slippers not just because they fit and were comfy but because they had belonged to my mother and she had helped me negotiate the many slippery steps that my mother and I had travelled together. End of Zenderella, a story of impermanence, attachment and orthopedic foot wear. Sorry no pumpkin coaches or mice even though it is fall and Halloween is heading in our direction.

So that's it for the Zen bedtime story. Grab that little Buddha bear and tuck yourself in. If you still have a self that is.

Zen Flesh, Zen Funny Bones

I'm thinking about humour today.  First someone asked me to write a little bio and in distilling myself down to 10 sentences (which if you read this blog much, you know is an impossible task for me; they were long sentences.)  I realized humour is a big part of who I am.

Go ahead, blame my father for the silliness you find here, he's not around to defend himself.  But because of him our family has a somewhat odd sense of humour.  He had funny names and descriptions for so many things.  As a child he never asked me how school was, he always said "how was Miss Spink today?"  A new dress was a "gown" and any haircut on a woman was referred to as an Ella Cinders cut (apparently an old cartoon character or movies star?) In the end we called it "grandad speak";  his own little language which left the grandkids howling: candies were gundies (a scottish term, I believe), glossette raisins were rabbit drops.  If he asked you to have one foot on the curb, it meant be ready when I pick you up.

While I was checking my flickr site today I  found a group called "Silly Buddha" which has all kinds of amusing pictures of little toy Buddha's posed and garden Buddhas covered to the head in snow and my personal favourite, 2 Buddha statues buckled up in a car ready to go.  Some people may find it offensive to mix images of the Buddha with humour, so if this is you, then don't take yourself out for cocktails to the Silly Buddha site.  All seemed in good taste to my twisted little mind.

And, for whatever reason, I felt a need to bust out of all that serious Zen stuff today; to lighten up.  And lightening up is a real tenet of Zen practice because we can get all serious and heavy about our lives and bore and depress ourselves.  Lightening up is about not taking ourselves so seriously.   I come from the school of  "if you can't laugh about it, you're in trouble."   I'm not talking tasteless or thoughtless here.  Rule number one when shopping at the funny store:  Humour at anyone's expense is always a bad idea.  When you're charging it up on the funny card make sure the bill goes to yourself. 

So I started out on the trail of some Zen funnies for your edification, of course.  It was interesting to hear what people out there had to say about Zen humour.  To start with it is often used to show the foolishness of logic or illustrate some point.  A lot of Zen stories are mildly funny, like the one I told in "Knowing Too Much, Too Soon" where the Zen master over fills the cup of a visiting professor to illustrate that he is too full of knowing.

Sometimes Zen humour takes the form of waking us up by asking us something absurd like the famous "what is the sound of one hand clapping."  Almost everyone has heard this one.  It's purpose, as is the purpose of all koans is to get us out of our heads and take us to a deeper level of understanding.

So now I'll share a couple of Zen jokes that I found out there in the googlesphere  One site that had some fun stuff was Allen Klein's, from Ha Ha to Ah Ah.  This little story is from the Zen master Ikkyu, who as a boy broke his master's tea cup.  Trying to avert trouble (or perhaps avoid a wack with a stick)  the young Ikkyu asked the master, "Why do people have to die?"  To which the master replied, "This is natural.  Everything has to die and has just so long to live."  To that Ikkyu produced the broken cup and said, "it was time for your cup to die."  Woody Allen could hardly have done better.

A poem by Ikkyu also expresses his adult sense of humour:

I'd like to

Offer something

To help you 

But in the Zen School

We don't have a single thing.

And finally as a finale a couple of one liners: " A Zen master once said to me: Do the opposite of what I tell you."  So I didn't.  And go away and think about this one:  "Living your life is a task so difficult it has never been attempted before."