Note: this reading was originally scheduled for discussion on February 18 but has been postponed to February 25.
Song of Fools
by Bonnie Myotai Treace
In the spirit of April Fool’s day, I wanted to address the fools. Though Zen is a tradition that takes its integrity from the fact that it doesn’t “fool around” in terms of life and death, it also has a very noble and wild-haired fool’s tradition within it. Zen is serious in its intention and realization, but it also contains a teaching of delightful surprise. It’s the fool’s work to so willingly and sincerely be this, that when the next moment arrives and everything changes, the deep joke isn’t wasted on us. We are it. It reminds me of a certain street performer here in the city. You see a couple dancing, the man twirling his partner this way and that, doing all sorts of incredible, slightly unnerving dance steps. Then they turn and you realize that she’s a doll made out of cloth, not a woman. At that moment the experience is altogether different; you’ve been fooled. Reality is other than what you think. The work of opening to this continual transformation of reality lies at the heart of practice. And to encounter this turning of the moment without fear or anger is the path of the Zen fool.
That path gets refreshed over and over again in our training. I’d like to tell this story as if it happened long, long ago, but it was only a week or two. I was in the midst of this flu-cold and feeling kind of lousy; my world felt like it was comprised of dirty tissues. I couldn’t quite get myself together or look good and I had to go to a meeting of several Zen notables, so I was consciously trying to pull it together, to put on the dignities. I did my best — got my hair smoothed out instead of having it sticking up in all directions. I put on clean clothes, wiped my nose, and popped a mint in my mouth. I had my doubts, but I entered the situation, said hello… the mint propelled itself out of my mouth onto the floor. Undeterred, I went to pick it up and bumped into someone, almost knocking them over. Right then I realized that I had to give it up entirely — the attempt to “do dignity” was self-conscious, and it was just creating more awkwardness. But what happens when we’re firmly committed to the banana-peel universe of shifting perspectives? My sense is that on the path of the utter fool, the quirks and jerks of being alive are enjoyed more often than not. And if we can smile at the minor calamities of what we call our self, who knows what courage may form to live an honest and generous life?
When we are intimate with this fool nature, there is no steady ground, no place to stand and hold onto our dignity. We can infuse that essential fool nature with heart and spirit, or we can fight to hide it. When we’re fighting and hiding, there’s an odd arrogance at work: it’s as if we’ve decided we know how things should be. Then, even if we’re acting out an apology for failing that ideal, we’re still caught up in a kind of subtle arrogance. We’re failing the world, or the world is failing us, because we know how it should be, and “this ain’t it!”
Dharma training provides the opportunity to transform that arrogance, to allow the fact of impermanence to be the reality of our lives. We see that the only honest way to make this work, to not be sucked into a vortex of pain and confusion, is to commit. We commit to our life in the moment, to each new turning, even though we know it will change. And eventually we commit precisely because we know it will change, utterly and completely.
How do we avoid the pain of changing conditions? Go to the place where there are no conditions. How do I go to the place where there are no conditions? When the condition is there, let it absorb you so completely that there’s no you and it. Take it up so utterly that there’s no witness, there’s no ego, there’s no doing.
So, let’s pay attention to the fools, and identify ourselves utterly. Let’s not turn from heat, turn from cold, looking for the palace elsewhere. If we go looking we’ll exhaust ourselves in the effort and miss the opportunity of a lifetime. And the great work, which requires each of us entirely, will not be accomplished.
Bonnie Myotai Treace, Sensei received Dharma transmission from John Daido Loori, Roshi in 1996, becoming his first dharma heir and a second generation Zen teacher in the Mountains and Rivers Order. She was the spiritual director of the Zen Center of New York City from 1993 to 2004. She is presently teaching independently in New York City.
