Scorpions Bite, and Yogis Help

Once a yogi, sitting on the banks of the Ganges, saw a scorpion fall into the water.  He scooped it out, only to be bitten by the scorpion.  It happened again, and again, with the same result.  A bystander asked the yogi:  "Why do you keep rescuing that scorpion, only to have it bite you?"
"It is the nature of scorpions to bite," replied the yogi.  "And it is the nature of yogis to help others when they can." - Hindu Mondo in the Zen Calendar (April 30, 2004).

Don't be consistent, but be simply true. - Oliver Wendell Holmes in the Zen Calendar (September 15, 2003).

"For a semi-straight chick, you're pretty excellent." - Todd B.'s entry into my senior yearbook (May, 1979).

Day 350.  Three Five Oh.  Three hundred fifty blogs.  Hard to imagine.  Two weeks from tomorrow I will complete my year.  Yippy!  I plan to devote this weekend to a hard edit of the blogs lacking a quote and/or launching the handwritten blogs into cyberspace (come to think of it, they probably don't even quality as "blogs" until they have been electronically dispersed.  Perhaps I should refer to them as "entries").  My OCD neurons have been twitching mightily at the lack of blog compulsivity and tidiness caused by the Dinosaur Death.

The best thing about a 24-hour-bug is that, generally, it is over in a day.  Last night's zazen session may have been the most difficult I ever completed, but somehow I managed to keep my butt on the cushion.  My mudra was a little saggy, my spine a little slacky, every breath sounded like a deep and protracted sigh (probably because it was), Nirvana didn't appear - even on the distant horizon.  Nonetheless, forty minutes elapsed, the timer sounded, life goes on.  Blessed impermanence.  It solves everything.

I have been grappling with an ironic situation that serves as a stark reminder that daily life, indisputably and eternally, will always provide circumstances upon which to apply my practice.  This particular event is also evidence that (at least for girls) we never entirely get over that brutal moment when we were excluded from the cool kids' table during 7th grade lunch.  The trauma was precipitated by learning that my business partner had been elected to a position on a board that I was also being considered for.  My ego took flight (and actually completed several stunning aerial loops) as it reminded me that I have practiced for 15 years longer than this partner, established her in a practice it took me 10 years to build, and contribute far more to the organization the board serves.  Granted, I didn't want the position, dreaded being offered it and facing the discomfort of turning it down, had probably made these sentiments fairly well known, and am exquisitely relieved that I wasn't chosen.  Still.  I wasn't chosen.

Naturally, my feelings of betrayal, rejection, and competitiveness were a bit disheartening.  After all, I have practiced Zen Buddhism for almost a year -- I should be impervious to such mortal feeling states.  It took a day (and extricating myself from a virulent, though thankfully brief, virus) for me to gain perspective and examine the situation through the Buddha lens I have been cultivating.  Here goes.

Scorpions bite, and yogis help others when they can.  That is their nature.  Along with it being the singular best compliment I ever received,  I think Todd's entry into my yearbook was an accurate description of my true nature.  Todd ran with a different crowd than I at our large, public high school, but we ended up in the same honors English class.  There is nothing cooler than a really smart stoner.  Todd was sort of a decade-younger Springsteen -- a little taller and with an Okie slant to the whole New Jersey swagger.  Detached, quiet, low-key (read between the lines:  probably high during most of his waking hours).  We sat next to each other toward the back of the class.  He figured out that his stereotype of a really smart, doesn't do drugs, Pep Club officer, Key Club Princess just didn't apply to me.  I figured out that my stereotype of worthless, stupid, unmotivated, immoral, law-breaking airhead didn't apply to him.  If that English class had lasted a few more months, we may have gone out.  I think I really liked him.

The point is, Todd saw into the essence of me.  I was straight, but only semi- (this was a time when "straight" meant "straight and narrow" rather than heterosexual).  I could also be fairly cool, smart but not naive, mainstream but not boring, law-abiding but not nerdy, pretty but not stuck-up.  I was definitely not in the inner circle with cheerleaders or Student Council representatives.  A little too rebellious for elected positions of student leadership.  Could have pulled it off, but didn't want to.  First impressions aside, I was not a Rah-Rah.

I am still not a Rah-Rah.  That is, most assuredly, not in my make-up.  Cheerful, extroverted, popularity craving,  impression seeking people that haven't mastered "Don't Give a Damn What Others Think" make me squirmy.  I gravitate toward the table - nay, the patio - where the introverted, cynical, sarcastic, rebellious realists are picking apart the prom committee.  I am not a Board member.  The proportion of blowing smoke up one another's skirts minutes to actually getting something done minutes that constitute Board meetings is unpalatable to me.  I am a direct service renderer.  A behind-the-scenes executer.  A performer of substantive rather than superficial acts.  I have neither the patience nor the attention span for board meetings.

Enter Zen, with its infinite quantities of loving-kindness and non-dualism.  I am learning to feel gratitude for the Rah-Rahs.  There is a place and a purpose for keeping up appearances, staging flashy events to create the impression that something hopeful and useful is going to happen, setting a stage upon which ego and accomplishment can be flaunted in the service of catalyzing ever increasing competition, performance and progress.  Organized society needs a balance of fluff and substance.  Of cynical skepticism and groundless optimism.  Of realists and idealists.

Scorpions bite, and yogis help others.  Fortunately, beauty, harmony and bliss come from being True.  True to our nature.  I am a clinician.  Not a Board member.  I can live with that.

Gassho,
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