Student Striver 2
Dead Practice in the Middle of the Road
by Zheng Dao (Fogueira)--For Brother Thing One--
My best friend Laura, the Pagan-Jewish Renewal flavored novelist, read my last article and sniffed, "too hoity-toity dispassionately up-nosed and emotionless! Too many foreign words!"
In other words, it was typical Buddhist fare. Then she proceeded to tell me she'd gone to her cat Shadow's grave, ornamented it with fake flowers and a new plaque which she'd made in the shape of a cat. Poor Shadow, living up to her name, went in and out with her, until the terrible day when she was found dead in the street, encountering bad karma in the form of a car.
The family had indeed lost a member, and even the Pagan-Jewish funeral, complete with eulogy and music, couldn't fill that eternal heart's' hole. "Why don't you write about THAT in your next article?" she challenged. "What's a Buddhist scholar got to say about a dead cat?"
Forever in the midst of a Zen garden, there I was again, between a rock and another one just as hard. One of the people I loved most in the world was suffering, and I didn't know how to make it stop because I was neither a Buddhist scholar nor someone who knew anything about death, except, perhaps, that not too long before she asked me the question, a big part of me that was "Buddhist" seemed to have died.
I had stopped meditating. I no longer knew what it was all about, what it was for, all I knew was I did not want to go in my room and sit - and let me tell you, if a Zen Buddhist doesn't want to go in her room and sit, and doesn't go in her room and sit, no matter how much she doth protest, for all intents and purposes she is no longer a Zen Buddhist.
Worse, in my few encounters with death in the past - my mother and sister and my dogs - I had acted in a most unnervingly detached matter, knowing in a hardboiled Buddhist fashion even at the age of thirteen that death was inevitable and usually ended the suffering of the person who had temporarily been in an earthly body.
But as to the dogs, it's a well-known fact that dog people usually can't penetrate into the hearts of cat people and vice versa. Miss Shadow frequently got quite up-nosed herself when I came to visit, sniffing the enemy on my person.
Bad Buddhist. Uninformed about cats Buddhist. I went to my books.
The first encounter was too cold. It came in the form of a Foreign Word that renders Zen, Zen, and not something else, i.e., the koan, which means a case for studying and opening the mind. Here is Master Norman Fischer's telling of the very famous koan which concerns a cat:
"The case: Nanchuan saw the monks of the eastern and western halls fighting over a cat. Seizing the cat, he told the monks: "If any of you can say a word of Zen, you will save the cat." No one answered. Nanchuan cut the cat in two. That evening Zhaozho returned to the monastery and Nanchuan told him what had happened. Zhaozho removed his sandals, placed them on his head, and walked out. Nanchuan said: "If you had been there, you would have saved the cat."
Fischer, in brilliant fashion combining instantaneous insight with intellectual analysis, goes on to explain the thing, which, of course, is not supposed to be explained to the poor students who read it; they're supposed to understand it inherently on a beyond heart and mind level, preferably instantaneously, justlikethat!
If I explained his explanation to her, that we're all dead cats, that we're all going to die, that life is precious, that once we do die there's no separation between "monk" and "cat," that there's a paradox here because the monks took a vow not to kill anything, that the putting sandals on his head was a Japanese mourning custom, that Zen is spontaneity and not thought-out words, this would not help the wound in her heart. She, even though a writer, would look at me witheringly and say, "too many words," and "no emotion."
The second encounter was too hot. It was Zen priest Madeline Ko-I Bastis' beautiful description of the death of her dog, Scrabble. He died of old age. As Laura did with Shadow, Ko-I held a funeral, planted flowers on his grave and placed three stones as a marker.
She writes: "I sat with Scrabble for awhile, saying the Heart Sutra (in the Zen tradition, it is thought that if a person hears these words at the moment of death, they will attain enlightenment). Then I performed the Buddhist funeral for animals. Part of the ceremony is giving Jukai (baptism) and the animal receives a Buddhist name. I chose the name of an ancient Zen patriarch, Bashumitsu which means "He who is an excellent friend."
This is lovely and warm, but she then goes on to quote:
"From the beginning there is neither birth nor death. Because of the accumulation of bad karma you received the body of an animal; Discard this karmic body quickly and enter the world of purity. Desire the pure crown of Enlightenment and realize the mind of a Buddha quickly."
I have a problem with this.
I believe few things manifest Buddha-nature more than dogs. No animal shows more unconditional love, at least towards humans. An animal basically understands the important things of existence: eating, sleeping, reproducing and having fun. It's not by accident that the most important koan in Zen Buddhism is "Does a dog have Buddha nature?" MU! (Japanese for "no inherent value!; Machts nichts?; Who wants to know?; Shut up already!") In simpler beginning-student words, Dog is already Buddha. Who am I to judge otherwise?
Is cat Buddha? Well, if dogs are already Buddha, why not cats? I can't understand cat mind, but that just says that I'm limited. The Buddha that can be Buddhaed is not the true Buddha.
In any case, I couldn't tell Laura to say the "official Buddhist animal funeral hymn," no matter with how much heart it was delivered, because my own heart would sing it differently.
The third encounter, however, was just right. As he had many times before, the Vietnamese Master Thich Nhat Hanh explained it all to me:
"When a cloud transforms itself into rain you can look deeply into the rain and see that the cloud is still there, laughing and smiling at you. This makes you happy, and you are able to stop crying because you are no longer attached to the appearance of the cloud. If you are struck down by your grief and you continue to cry for a long time, it is because you have been left behind, caught in the form or sign of the cloud. You are caught in an appearance from the past and you are not able to see the new form.
"When we lose someone we love, we should remember that the person has not become nothing. 'Something' cannot become 'nothing,' and 'nothing' cannot become 'something.' Science can help us understand this, because matter cannot be destroyed -- it can become energy. And energy can become matter, but cannot be destroyed. In the same way, our beloved was not destroyed; she has just taken on another form." (No Death No Fear)
Laura didn't have time for foreign words and nose-in-the-air objectivity. What she liked to do was, as she put it, "grok nature." And essentially that is what Buddhists do as well. Like Tom Joad, Shadow is literally and metaphysically "everywhere." In every atom, mite and mote, in every memory, as the feast of Passover forever keeps in Jewish hearts the liberation of the Jewish people, and as Christians say during every Easter, "I am the resurrection and the life; though he has died, so shall he live."
In other words, this Buddhist learner got to tell her friend that there was no difference in the way a Jewish-Pagan and a Buddhist feel about dead cats, that every time she saw a cat, she'd think: "Shadow!"
The words of Master Louis Armstrong rose in my mind: "What we play is life."
L'chaim. Omitofo! (Which are foreign words respectively meaning, "Here's to life!" and "Go Buddha Go!") Live!
(On that note, the student returned to her cushion and sat.)