The Furious Spinner

I have been in that semiconscious state that comes along when one is visiting the country of the ill. On this visit, I realized again what I always forget once my tourist visa is up and I leave this place. There is, for me, eventually—if the suffering is not too great—something comfortable and comforting about stepping out of the mainstream of life. Something comforting about this forced isolation. Sometimes trying to communicate with people is just so much work. I have felt cocooned by this sickness. The relative silence has been soothing.

I sat outside on the grass next to my rosemary plant. I listened to the birds—and the bees. I saw four different kinds of bees in the lavender flowers of the rosemary bush. A bumblebee walked beside me in the grass; then all of a sudden she stopped moving. Didn't look like she was breathing. Then an ant moved toward her and she twitched a bit. I put a stick next to her in case she needed something to help her climb out of the grass that may have been obstructing her view. She used the stick to turn herself around. Then she went back into hibernation. I wondered if I was watching her die.

After a while, I grew as still as the bee, and I turned my attention to the hummingbird at my feeder. I am always in awe of hummingbirds. When I got up to go back into the house, a hummingbird flew by me. I heard it before I saw it. Have you ever heard a hummingbird? How to describe it? I think the first time I heard it I thought it was a very loud bee. Only different. If you've heard the sound, try to describe it as if you don't know what it is. Mario and I both just tried. We kept saying things like “it sounds like wings beating very rapidly.” Then, “it sounded like Vvvvvvvv.” Both quite inadequate descriptions to the sound of this particular close encounter.

Today I flipped through the May issue of Shambhala Sun, the one with Alice Walker on the cover. I love Alice Walker. I remember how I felt when I read The Color Purple. I had never read prose like that in my life. I was exhilarated. It was sparse and bare and spare (can I come up with more adjectives to convey the Zen-like beauty of her prose) and so gorgeous. And then The Temple of My Familiar. (I mean, my gawd, she wrote about the goddess!) Amazing, amazing books. Today I was reading the text of a talk she gave to African-American Buddhists (even though she is not Buddhist), Suffering Too Insignificant for the Majority to See. I felt as though she and I were sitting down for some tea and she was speaking to me.

She says, "My novel The Color Purple was actually my Buddha novel without Buddhism. In the face of unbearable suffering following the assassinations and betrayals of the Civil Rights movement, I too sat down upon the Earth and asked its permission to posit a different way from that in which I was raised. Just as the Buddha did, when Mara, the king of delusion, asked what gave him the right to think he could direct humankind away from the suffering they had always endured. When Mara queried him, the Buddha touched the Earth. This is the single most important act, to my mind, of the Buddha. Because it acknowledges where he came from. It is a humble recognition of his true heritage, his true lineage. Though Buddhist monks would spend millennia pretending all wisdom evolves from the masculine and would consequently treat Buddhist nuns abominably, the Buddha clearly placed himself in the lap of the Earth Mother and affirmed Her wisdom and Her support."

Later she said, "The equally good news for us is that we can turn our attention away from our oppressors—unless they are directly endangering us to our faces—and work on the issue of our suffering without attaching them to it. The teaching that supports that idea is this: Suppose someone shot you with an arrow, right in the heart. Would you spend your time screaming at the archer, or even trying to locate him? Or would you try to pull the arrow out of your heart?...Screaming at the archer is a sure way to remain attached to your suffering rather than easing or eliminating it. A better way is to learn, through meditation, through study and practice, a way to free yourself from the pain of being shot, no matter who the archer might be."

This is wise advice. (The entire speech is quite wonderful.) You or I might substitute another word for "meditation." Some other kind of practice or way of being in the world. But the point would remain the same: Trying to get the archer to acknowledge his crime or even acknowledge our existence is a lousy way to expend our energy. Let's just pull out the arrow and heal the wound.

I’m ready.

I think I shall sit quietly a while longer.

Labels: bees, Buddhism, healing

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