In a Dark Time

The ideas Kosho Uchiyama discusses in Opening the Hand of Thought seem to deserve more than a single blog entry. I’ve spent considerable time thinking about them, even if I haven’t managed to put those thoughts into words yet. No guarantee that this will make any better sense of it. I suspect that if I could talk to Uchiyama he would tell me not to think about it so much, that thinking is the very thing he wants us to avoid. For me, though, this only makes sense if we try to avoid certain kinds of thinking, not all thinking.

Even if you don’t agree with Uchiyama’s overall view of life, there is a lot here to consider. It’s certainly hard to disagree that there is more to life than definitions, language, and thought.

Is this reality of life that transcends definitions, language, and thought some mystical, esoteric world deeply hidden somewhere—something we are unable to talk about or even imagine? No, of course not, since in actuality we are always living out the reality of life.

Even though much of my life has been spent reading and studying philosophy, ultimately, I would agree with Uchiyama that “self does not exist because I think about it.” To the contrary, thinking too much can obscure life, at least the best part of it. 

Using our intellect to come up with some answer to this we can only come up with a one-sided or abstract answer. Ultimately, all we can say is that the reality of life is as it is. The reality of the life of the self is simply to live life just as it is. Self does not exist because I think about it or because I don’t think about it. Either way, this self, universal and personal, is my life. Zazen is a way of truly putting this reality of life into practice.

It’s also hard to disagree with Uchiyama when he argues that we often get dragged around by our fantasies, trying to actually live out our dreams.

We are always living out the reality of our own lives, although we very often lose sight of this reality, getting caught up in fantasies of the past or in our relationships with others. We end up being dragged around by those fantasies and by our comparisons of ourselves with others. Living like that, how can we not become filled with feelings of utter isolation and loneliness, overwhelmed by our jealousy and envy of those around us or by some other great suffering?

We also live in a world that constantly tells us we need something we don’t have if we want to be happy. 

Once we think of something we want or like, we assume that the simple fact of thinking we want it or like it is the truth. Then, since we think this idea is the truth and is worth seeking, we proceed to chase after it everywhere and our whole world becomes a world of greed. On the other hand, once we think of something we hate or dislike, we assume again that the simple fact of thinking we hate it is the truth. Thinking that this idea is the truth so we ought to follow it, we chase after it until our whole world turns into anger.

I think Uchiyama overstates the point, but it’s impossible to deny that our society tries to sell us things we don’t need by creating dissatisfaction in our lives. In fact, I spent years teaching just that in my Mass Media course.

The more power a nation is able to gain, the more it tries to acquire. This spiral perpetuates itself because the knowledge to develop our standard of living, which is the wisdom of our modern scientific and technological civilization, was born in a matrix of dissatisfaction. Dissatisfaction is the mother of invention and progress. That is why no matter how much scientific or technological progress is made, people will never be satisfied. As long as they walk along this path shouldering the bag of desires and dissatisfaction, every time they open that bag, even hundreds or thousands of years from now, they will always be pulling out their dissatisfaction along with their new ideas.

If we fall victim to these kinds of thinking, we are always going to be dissatisfied.

If we’re not careful, we are apt to grant ultimate value to something we’ve just made up in our heads. Worldly types are always in a haze, thinking that money, fame, or status is the most valuable thing. Since we sometimes become absentminded and forget what is most important, we need to practice and reflect upon ourselves continually. This is what I mean by saying zazen is the most venerable thing in our lives.

I am not entirely convinced that dissatisfaction is always a bad thing or that we should just go through life accepting what IS. After all, it’s probably dissatisfaction that drives a Westerner to explore Buddhism in the first place, isn’t it?

Not too long ago, I was reading an article that mentioned Tucker Zimmerman’s recent death, and several musicians I admire and listen to regularly said he was their favorite folk artist. Naturally, I had to check out his music on Apple Music and ended up buying Zimmerman’s I Wonder if I Will Ever Come True. My favorite song on the album is:

When I like a song I usually search online and download the lyrics:

Once upon a time, a farmer sent his son
With a horse to graze upon the mountainside.
He fell asleep; when he awoke, the horse was gone.
Came back without it; the neighbour said:
“Oh, what bad luck!”
The farmer said:
“How do you know?” (2x)

The very next day, the farmer sent his son
Back into the mountains to seek the runaway.
He found the horse and seven other wild ones.
He brought them home and the neighbour said:
“Oh, what good luck!”
The farmer said:
“How do you know?” (2x)

On the very next day, the farmer sent his son
To the wild horses that needed to be tamed.
First one he climbed on, it threw him down to the ground.
It broke his arm; the neighbour said:
“Oh, what bad luck!”
The farmer said:
“How do you know?” (2x)

The very next day, a war was declared,
And the army men came through the countryside
Looking for soldiers, but they couldn’t take anyone
With a broken arm; the neighbour said:
“Oh, what good luck!”
The farmer said:
“How do you know?” (2x)
“Oh, what good luck!”
The farmer said:
“How do you know?”

I’d never heard this song before, but the story seemed very familiar. I searched for a similar story through my two Chuang Tzu books but couldn’t find it there. At 84, I certainly don’t have a good enough memory to remember where I had originally encountered it, so I turned, once again, to ChatGPT which dutifully returned:

Tucker Zimmerman’s “Taoist Tale” is a retelling of the famous Chinese parable usually called “The Farmer and the Horse,” “The Old Man Who Lost His Horse,” or “The Story of the Taoist Farmer.”

With that information I was able to find this,

Sai Weng Shi Ma refers to a famous story from the Huai Nan Zi about how difficult it is to foresee the twists and turns that result in misfortune turning into fortune, and fortune leading to misfortune.

There once was an old man skilled in divination, who lived by the border of a hostile country,

One of his horses strayed into the foreign lands and did not return. The neighbors consoled him for his loss.  But the old man said, “Why should I assume this is not a good thing?”

After several months, the horse came back from the land of the Xiongnu, accompanied by another fine horse! Everyone congratulated the old man (it appears he is fortunate indeed!)  His family had a wealth of fine horses, and his son loved riding them.

Yet the old man said, “How can we be hastily conclude this is fortunate?”

One day, the son fell off the horse, and broke his leg, and again, everyone consoled the old man. But the father said, “Why should I hastily assume that this is an unfortunate event?”

One year later, a war began, and all able-bodied men took up arms and went to war. Of the men from his town, nine out of ten died.  It was only because of the son’s broken leg, that he did not fight.  The father and son were spared the greatest tragedy.

Therefore, misfortune begets fortune, and fortune begets misfortune. This goes on without end, and its depths can not be measured.

The farmer’s refusal to make a judgment in the first place is very close to the Taoist distrust of rigid distinctions—fortunate/unfortunate, success/failure, gain/loss. Events continue changing, so our judgment of them is based on an arbitrarily chosen stopping point. Zimmerman actually preserves that idea unusually well. He does not end by saying, “See, the broken arm was really a blessing.” The neighbor again calls it good luck, and the farmer again asks, “How do you know?

Uchiyama’s Opening the Hand of Thought made me recall this song. The song seemed to offer a clear example of “opening the hand of thought.” The problem is less the event itself than the mind immediately attaching a label to it—good, bad, fortunate, disastrous. Taoism says, in effect, that reality is still unfolding. Too often we judge events rather than just seeing them as they are.