The no-business of zen

I have been struggling with my running lately, because I often don’t feel like working out. The morning is soft and gentle, awakening in a soft yellow sunshine, and everything feels so peaceful and calm, that you just want to cuddle yourself in its comfortable embrace. The coffee gives you a sweet kiss, and your cigarette is just peace and heaven. You are just where you need to be, right in your comfort zone, and there is no need to get out. There is a resistance, a refusal, to leave that comfort zone, and you just want the peace and morning to last all day. If it could be this still, this beautifully awakening forever. Oh, if the day could never come, with all its business.

But then the lieutenant enters your mind, the one that drilled you back in your army days, and he terrorizes you once again, traumatically, with his harsh voice and loud commands. Get out of your couch, you lazy ass, get on your feet, get that running gear on and get out the door. Make sure you are sweating, and puffing, and giving it your most extreme. I don’t want to see you lazy here ! You want to get fat ? You want to be that fat kid again ? You want all of the miles you’ve run so far to amount to nothing ? You want to be laughed at again ? You want to drop dead after running half a mile ? You have to keep up the effort ! You can never give up ! You quitter !

And you want to vomit, vomit out all of the lieutenant’s character, for once you admired him, and you loved him, and you thought he was kind of funny and charming, and you thought he was a hero, the one voice you’d always listen to. He was just the kind of guy that would keep you from failing in life, he had just the temperament that would allow you to move mountains, he had the working spirit, he had the courage, he had the wide chest and the all-knowing, he had the power and the authority, the self and the respect, he had all it took to make you all you could and would ever be.

But today, you just want to vomit. You just want to kick him out, and not even that, for kicking him out would be just another business of stress. Today, you just wish he wasn’t there. Today, you want to bask in the early morning sunshine, sit there with that cup of coffee, and take another drag from you gently circling smoking cigarette. You want to close your eyes and think of nothing, you just want to be absent, as absent as you can, and empty, as empty as you can. You want to be one with the morning, you want the sun to rise in you, you want to serve your coffee to the sunshine and warm the day with the smoke of your cigarette. You just want to be still, to hear the birds, you want to dance, and maybe you could gently sing. You want peace, and you want quiet.

So you’re not listening to the lieutenant today, today you are disobedient, today you commit some insubordination, you rebel, because you just want peace.

Thus it is today, with me, my ego is painting all these pictures of what it would like for breakfast, a run that nearly kills me, a figure all the women fall for, a health that will never die, and the courage and self-assurance of a lieutenant shouting drill commands. My ego wants it one way, but my soul arises in another. Like the sun, it just climbs gently on the porch, like the sun, it is silent, but says so much. And it touches me. The silent splendor of awakening in peace, just moves and touches me.

Shall I never give up on running, will I obey the lieutenant forever more ? Will I still salute to him, the day my body dies ? Or will I have disobeyed, and fought for peace ?

It is not easy, the ego, neurosis. It shouts so hard, it paints so forcefully, it demands so strongly. This has to be there, that has to be there, then it will be okay. But for the ego, it is easy, it just paints a picture and urges you to pursue perfection promised. It is you, the soul, that has to buy it, of course, in a good consumerist manner, it is you, the soul, who has to throw away the peace and the sunshine, and start chasing what you don’t really believe in. It is like being colonized every day over and over again, untill one day perhaps, you return to the calm and the simply rising.

So what if you don’t immediately jump from the porch, jump out the couch, can you withstand the demanding of the ego ? Can you just say fuck you, lieutenant, not today, I’m very well just as I am, I am perfect, everything’s cool just the way it is. No need for your commands, no need for warfare and struggle today. Can you say all is peace, and you just want it to simply stay that way ?

It is not so easy, it is all about the zen. We are warned by the meditation master, the ego will come, the mind will come, it will take us away from just being, it will take us away from our breath, and it will do so endlessly, time and time again. There will be this, there will be that, there will be our agenda, there will be the fear, the self-loathing, there will be the feelings of guilt, of not living up to ‘our’ expectations. We will feel small, we will start to cry, out of fear, out of guilt, it is very hard to just stay still. Because the ego, the mind, is so unforgiving, it is so harsh, it is so demanding and it knows no compassion, no excuse, no tenderness, no way to forgive and let it be.

Hysteria is a very interesting phenomenon in this respect. Hysteria is a propensity to ask for a task, to ask for a duty, but then, to not follow up on the orders anyway. To cast aside the master, to deny him his authority. The example of hysteria is what may teach us all to throw away the lieutenant, throw away the colonizer with all of his commercials, and to not buy into giving up our peace for the endless wars of perfection and consumption. We have to know hysteria, we have to know zen, oh, how we need the wisdom of the jungle tribe. To live in peace, to smell the coffee, to let the cigarette smoke circle so gently, to breathe with the rising sun and to smile so still inside, where we have not even smiled at all.

What is happiness ? Is happiness following the lieutenant, never resting, sleeping almost no hours every night, always being busy, always in a hurry, jumping to commands, obeying in a haste ? Is happiness going to war and raise our flag where someone else’s just stood ? Is happiness going to extremes to please our boss ? And should we accept the difference between our being and the perfect picture in salaries of shame, self-doubt, fear, self-hate, and all of the neurosis that comes with not ever being able to live up to perfection, an ever increasing demand ?

Should the lieutenant keep governing our inner soul’s economy ? Making us buy ever more of his commands ? Making us thirsty for them ? Making us ask for some perfection or ideal that we can doubtingly pursue ? Should we ask the lieutenant for forgiveness, or for a proper measure of punishment and discipline ?

Oh, how awry this all is to the zen mind. To the one who drinks his coffee with the rising sun. How this is all a game to him, that he has forsaken long ago, when he last said goodbye to his ego, his master and authority, when he for the last time disobeyed and stood as a free man for the first time in his life. Now, no one can command his will, now, he is his own man. But he will smile, and tell you long stories for sure, about when he was crying out of fear, out of doubt, out of shame, out of all the illusions of inferiority that come with a lieutenant in your brain. He has cried, that’s why he smiles. He cries no more. He sits in peace in the midst of the jungle, he breathes in peace, when he smokes his pipe. He is even with himself and everything, when he says all is well, the world is just as it should be.

So this morning, I did not jump into my workout clothes, I did not hurry out the door. I just sat and sat and sat some more, listening to the quietness, smiling at the sun. This morning I drank my coffee in my slippers and pajamas, and I just let all of the lieutenant’s ego shout. I let him curse and swear, I let him speak of fear and seduce me with perfection. I let him threaten me and call me names, and in the end I let him sigh and walk away. You cannot sell your picture of perfection to a man who lives in perfection all around. You cannot add to contentment with a dream to chase if a man is content and smiling at the simplicity and peacefulness of just his life. You cannot seduce a man into consuming if he is not willing to throw away his joy of just knowing the mild and kind nature of our nature. You cannot take a man to war, if he is in love with the morning sun and his cup of coffee pleasing him to tears of gratitude.

Maybe it also works the other way. Maybe you cannot explain to the busy business of the lieutenant how it feels to savor peace, how peace can be in your coffee, in the circling smoke of cigarettes, how peace can be in the morning and in the sun so joyfully rising without a sound. Can you explain the silentness of ecstasy and the closeness of all life, can you explain love without the struggle, to a man who lives for chasing dreams and illusions in his head ? Can you explain to the president how to leave the oil in the ground, and just sit on it ? Can you explain zen to the beings of the war ?

You cannot take a man of peace to war, and you cannot explain fulfilledness to the one who’s always chasing more. You cannot say move to the still one, and you cannot say stop to the rushing. Perhaps there are two kinds of people, the zen one, and the business one. And who is right ? I don’t know, I wouldn’t say, but this morning I just let the run go for what it was, and I sure was glad I had my cup of coffee.