Zen and the art of maintenance

April 22, 2004

Dear Julie,

DC gave me a Zen garden for my desk at work. It consists of a 6-by-6-inch tray, white sand, five small stones and two tiny rakes. The tines of one of the rakes are minusculely wider apart than the tines of the other rake.

The Zen garden suggests this tiny difference between the patterns the two rakes make in the sand in reality is not tiny at all. Differentiating is precisely the mind's occupation.

The garden is sandwiched ignobly between empty cans of Diet Rite soda and "Webster's New World Dictionary."

It didn't come with instructions. The idea, I suppose, is to rake the sand around the rocks into calming patterns that perhaps will be mirrored in your mind.

A radio scanner in the newspaper office continuously carries the voices of police and fire department dispatchers communicating with officers and firefighters. Approximately 25 reporters and editors are talking to each other or interviewing sources on the phones all day and much of the night.

A newspaper office is an unusual place for contemplation. But why not?

"The only Zen you can find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there," Robert Pirsig wrote in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."

Zen is the Sanskrit word for meditation. The difficult thing about meditation, of course, is stilling our chimpanzee minds for longer than a breath or two. The mind abhors concentration. It seeks to be distracted.

We will think of any silly thing to avoid thinking of nothing.

Try it right now. Think of nothing. How long before you remembered something you were supposed to do? A second? Probably less.

But thinking of nothing is the doorway to the soul, the place where you remember who you are and that everything is just as it's supposed to be.

Joseph Campbell, whose wisdom makes me swoon, writes: "Each carries within himself the all; therefore it may be sought and discovered within. The differentiations of sex, age and occupation are not essential to our character, but mere costumes which we wear for a time on the stage of the world. The image of man within is not to be confounded with the garments."

The mind is silenced by waves breaking on a beach, repetitive drumming and many other things. The images and sounds connect us all to the same sound that has been reverberating through the universe since creation.

Many years ago my old friend David took a Transcendental Meditation course and afterward almost insisted I do the same even though the cost was a lot of money to me at the time. He assured me I would not be sorry.

I forget to drink from these waters for long periods of time. DC has reminded me that they're still there. You don't have to do TM. You do have to do something, whether it's prayer, yoga, tai chi, rock climbing or simply walking with nowhere to go.

Not everyone knows how to maintain a motorcycle. Everyone should know how to maintain themselves.

Love, Sam

Sam Blackwell is managing editor of the Southeast Missourian.