Buy Bewilderment

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. - Rumi in the Zen Calendar (November 23, 2007).

Day 306. I have followed Rumi's directive. I have forsaken cleverness and, as each day passes, I wallow in bewilderment.

The very word "bewilderment" delights me. The connotation is multifaceted: surprised, a little excited, caught unaware, uncertain but interested, faced with the unfamiliar, cautious yet curious, rendered defenseless, standing on the cusp of new possibility. It reminds me of when I first learned that the Chinese character for "crisis" is a combination of characters for the words "challenge" and "opportunity." Interestingly, as I recall occasions in my life during which I felt bewilderment, none of them felt like a crisis. They all felt very much like challenging opportunities.

I was bewildered when I first heard the word "Celiac," (this incident of bewilderment arrived way too soon on the heels of the incident in which the stick denoted "pregnant.") I was bewildered when I learned that the couple with whom I had bonded most closely while working on a team to assist persons living with AIDS were Baptists. Bewilderment accompanied the house closing I attended with my partner a mere five months after we met. I was bewildered on the 10th anniversary of my analysis and the 50th anniversary of my parents. I felt bewilderment when my son turned down Wake Forest and accepted a free ride at O.U. (but not at all when he left O.U. after only one semester).

I distinctly remember feeling bewildered each and every Sunday I attended my teacher's dharma talks. What was this Buddhist nonsense of which he spoke so confidently? How would I ever learn the meaning of all those words with so many a's in them (dharma, sangha, Boddhisattva, Avalokiteshvara, Tassahara)? Why would a person want to sit still on a cushion for 40 minutes at a time while her spine ached, her legs went to sleep, and her mind raced around like kittens after their first taste of catnip? How could it possibly be a good thing to completely empty my mind and surrender my ego? Practice loving kindness with people I don't even like?! Accept Reality as it IS, rather than wrest it into my Preferred Version of it? And (perhaps most bewildering of all!) WHY do all that if there is nothing to ATTAIN?!?

Ah, but wait. Here is the most bewildering thing of all: Commit to sitting zazen and blogging every single day for an entire year. Forgo cleverness for honesty, integrity, humility, and yes, for bewilderment. Top it off with infinite Gratitude for all that I have not attained. Therein rests my point. Bewilderment is best described by challenge and opportunity.

Gassho,
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