The Long Arm of the Moment

On the second Saturday each month, I go out for an hour in our Hillsdale commercial center to pick up litter. I carry a trash bag and a “grabber,” one of those arm extender devices that allow me to pick up cigarette butts, candy wrappers and beer cans without ever having to stoop over.

The physical labor is easy, thanks largely to the grabber, a magnificent invention (whose inventor is worthy, perhaps, of a Nobel Peace Prize).

The problem with litter collecting is the mental part — the thoughts that crowd my brain as I confront the debris of bus stops, gullies and road shoulders. It’s pretty easy to get bummed out by the slobs who throw trash in the right-of-way. Equally depressing is thinking about just how much trash there is.

Picking it up is a task similar to that of Sisyphus trying to roll his proverbial boulder to the summit, only to lose it at the top and to have to start over.

In short, my trash pick-up experience isn’t helped by my fixating on the causes of littering and the unending consequences of human neglect. In the extreme, such thoughts become downright misanthropic.

So I’ve taken to turning trash grabbing into a kind of Zen meditation.

Detachment is the order of the hour. I absorb myself in the moment’s object of collection.

This MOMENT. NOW!

This cigarette butt has no past for me. I give no thought to who smoked it and dropped it. I give no thought to others who have smoked the innumerable butts I will encounter on my rounds.

I am utterly focused on aiming my grabber’s tongs so that when I squeeze the handle they will grasp this butt. Still in the now, I lift it and deposit it in my bag.

Now. Now. Now. Fritos bag, Starbuck’s cup, McDonald’s wrapper.

One at a time; moment by moment.

Soon the moments add up to an hour. My bag is full. I dump it in a dumpster that the local food co-op has given me permission to use. The manager rewards me with a free toasted, buttered, poppy-seed bagel and a steaming cup of coffee.

That’s it.

As I sip the coffee and sink my teeth into the soft, buttery bagel, I stay with the moment. I am simply eating to sustain two arms and hands of humanity’s billions. Some drop trash; others pick it up. Some build houses and roads, some drive buses and trains, some tie sutures, some flip burgers, some fire rifles, some cradle infants.

All of this is what the human organism does. I think of the arms and hands I call “mine” as helping define this small moment of existence in this small place.

Starving on eating menus

I’ve taken to downloading lectures into my iPod so that I can feed my brain while I exercise my body at the Southwest Community Center.

Among recent downloads have been talks by the late Alan Watts. Watts, who died in 1973, was a great popularizer of Zen Buddhism in America.

You can listen to many of his lectures here.

A week ago, as I was running on the treadmill, I heard Watts say the following. The fact that I was on a treadmill at the time of hearing this was purely co-incidental and, frankly, weird. As you will see, Watts speaks of the Westerner’s need for control systems. What greater control system is there than the treadmill?

Anyway, here’s what he said:

The assumption of Judeo-Christian culture is that man in his nature is sinful, and therefore can’t be trusted. The assumption of ancient Chinese culture is that man in his essential nature is good and therefore has to be trusted. They say to us, if you can’t trust your own basic nature, you can’t really rely on the idea that you are untrustworthy. And therefore you are hopelessly fouled up.

This different assumption has amazing political and other consequences. If we say, no, we human beings are fallible and basically selfish and really, really fundamentally evil, we need law and order. We need a control system to put us in order. And then we project these control systems into the church or into the police or into somebody, who are really ourselves, disguised.

It’s like daylight savings time. Everybody could simply get up and hour earlier, but instead of doing that, we alter the clock because the clock is a kind of authority. We say, well, the clock says it’s time for us to get up. The Ameri-Indians laugh at the pale faces because the pale face doesn’t know he is hungry until he looks at his watch.

And so in this way we become clock-dominated. And the abstract system takes over from the physical organic situation.

And this is my big pitch, if I’m going to make a big pitch: We’ve run into a cultural situation where we have confused the symbol with the physical reality, the money with the wealth and the menu with the dinner.

And we are starving on eating menus....

The disappearance of story

Ron Marson, tall, thin, intent, serene, rose for his chair in the silence of our Quaker meeting last Sunday and spoke his truth.

He had just returned from a 10-day hike in the mountains, he told us. In the course of his trek, he said, he became one with the forest, the trail and the moments.

His entire being reduced itself to stepping around a rock or root, or grasping a branch, or hearing wind in the fir or feeling the cool of the shadows.

“My own story disappeared!” he exclaimed.

He invoked the phrase several times. “My own story disappeared.” It was almost as if he were in awe, still a bit stunned.

“My own story disappeared!”

Now that he was back, his story had returned. Society, friends, responsibilities called upon him to be “him.” The forest and the mountains made no such demand. Instead, they absorbed him.

When Ron rises to speak in our meeting for worship, as he often does, I am always struck by the depth of his words. It isn’t a depth of complexity, but — in the manner of seasoned Friends —the depth of simplicity, integrity and peace.

In the silence that followed his brief “ministry,” it occurred to me that Ron had just shared his experience of losing his story by telling one. Some stories are like that.

It’s a bit like the conundrum I share with my journalism students about the day there was no news. It would be the biggest news day ever. No news? And why might that be? Were all audiences vaporized along with all journalists? Would it be the day humanity disappeared, destroying itself perhaps, leaving fleas and worms to decide what was “news.”

But more to the point, Ron’s story about the loss of story speaks to how Quakerism cleaves to Zen and mysticism in general. They rely on stories, and on the non-story called silence, which in turn resounds with everything — and nothing.

Solutions masquerading as problems

The events of this long day have delivered me to one of life's wonderful paradoxes: How often we become so focused on "problems" that we fail to see them for what they really are — solutions.

The negativity of grappling with "a problem" prevents us from embracing it as a "solution."

But when we do manage to step back and perceive "problems" as "solutions," it is often nothing short of liberating.

An example or two might help. Being rejected for a job may seem like a problem, but it can also be a valuable learning experience and the chance to land a job where you are valued. The end of a relationship may not be an end at all, but the beginninng of a new, stronger, healthier one with the same person as well as with someone else.

(Yes, I know this is beginning to sound like one of those self-help or pop psychology texts, but bear with me. I know where this is going.)

The idea is related to one that comes up in my "Information Gathering" class. Researchers advise us to "look for the questions in our answers." Of course each of THOSE questions lead to more answers — ones we would have missed had we stopped with just one answer.

So how is this related to reframing problems as solutions?

Ultimately, we should merge these two dualities (problem/solution and question/answer) into one.

There's nothing new in any of this. The Chinese have taught the wisdom of merging Yin and Yang into Yin/Yang for centuries.

And Zen Buddhism advises us to go a step farther by expunging the very words "problem" and "solution," and "question" and "answer."

That's hard for us, but it's worth a try—except that we shouldn't "try" it at all.

The only way to do it, Zen would say, is to be it.