My 3 year-old daughter asked me the
other day:
Mom, what do memories look like and where do they
come from?
At the time she was standing in front of
the open refrigerator in our kitchen looking for a snack, and I was sitting in
the dining room. It seemed that her
questions were so mundane, that they did not even require a look away from the refrigerator when she asked them.
In the moment I tried my best to answer
her question- trying to find words that were informational and satisfying.
Yet I must admit, I felt pleasantly
stumped by her question. I almost
wanted to linger in the question rather than fumble my way to an answer,
and it felt reminiscent of a Koan.
In traditional Zen Practice a
Koan is a story, dialogue, question or statement that is offered by a Zen
Master to their student as a method of teaching. The purpose of the Koan is to challenge and
test the student.
Classical examples of traditional
Zen Koans include:
o What is the sound of one hand clapping, and
o What did you look like before you were born.
Just for fun, I have asked my 7 year-old
son the 2 Koans that I just listed.
What was interesting to me was that he readily answered each Koan as if it was
the most ordinary of questions.
No pausing. No questioning. No confused
expression on his face.
It was as if I had just asked him the
most commonplace of questions like: Is it raining outside?
Observing my son’s considerable comfort
with the philosophical and my daughter’s casual inquiry about the unknown (to
her) struck me poignant.
It seems we adults get very quickly befuddled
when we are facing a puzzle that we cannot solve (possibly why a Koan is
sometimes referred to as a “Great Doubt”), when maybe it is our reaction
to the Koan that creates the struggle, rather than the conundrum itself.
In other words, if we adults, like
children, could have less emphasis on our own perception, our own
sense of effort, our own OMG
reactions when facing a riddle or perplex problem, what would be different?
What could be different?
Compassion Toward Others: Including Trees?
In my yard I have a small Japanese
Maple Tree that may be on its last leg.
The roots do not look super hearty at
this point, and each year fewer and fewer leaves sprout from the braches.
My daughter has taken a liking to this
little tree though, and each time we are playing in the yard, she will walk
right up to the reddish brown shrub and talk to it.
“Are you thirsty?” she will ask. “Are
you tired?”
Yesterday, my daughter asked me if I had
a Kleenex in my pocket. I did, and I
handed it to her. She took the tissue
and walked over to the tree, and put the paper up against the branches.
When I asked my daughter what she was
doing, she said very matter-of-factly: “She’s
sick. She has a runny nose.” “She” in this case was the tree.
She, my daughter,
then proceeded to get water for the tree and poured it over the roots that
half-heartedly stuck out of the ground, while proclaiming that the sick tree
was quite thirsty and tired.
As I stood by watching this display of
compassion toward another living organism, I was moved to wonder what this
level of compassion for all living organisms might look like on a world-wide
platform?
In that moment, I remembered once
hearing an interview on NPR with a professor and author of environmental
biology at the State University of New York named Robin Wall Kimmerer.
In the interview, I recalled her statement:
I can’t think of a single scientific study in the
last few decades that has demonstrated that plants or animals are dumber than
we think. It’s always the opposite, right? What we’re revealing is the fact
that they have a capacity to learn, to have memory, and we’re at the edge of a
wonderful revolution in really understanding the sentience of other beings.
How interesting that children already intuitively
know what we adults continue to question- thereby requiring more hard-won
scientific research and studies to “prove” what is already here.
Compassion Toward Self
Last summer my family and I went for a
long hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
It was
glorious day, one that I will remember always, but at the very end there was an unfortunate
accident: my then 2 year-old daughter fell flat-out, face first, onto the
pavement.
My husband, son and I all saw it happen,
and we collectively drew in our breath when we saw the “splat.”
I think we were all waiting for the
initial scream, followed by the tears, and then the all-out total meltdown.
Strangely though, it never came…
We all rushed over to my daughter’s side
to help her back up onto her feet.
Of course she looked upset and
distressed, but also oddly contained, which led us to decide to just
keep walking as if nothing had happened.
To this, however, my daughter, forcefully
objected.
“Wait!”
she asserted.
We all stopped.
She then proceeded to sit down on the
ground, exactly where she had fallen, and kiss all the different
areas of her body that had been scuffed and bruised in the fall.
Of course it is very common for most
kids, including my daughter, to ask for a kiss on the “boo boo” after a
fall or an accident, but in this case, my daughter was taking care of herself.
As if it was the most natural thing in
the world, she began kissing her left and right knee, right elbow and left
elbow; methodically moving through each area of her injured body.
When all of the necessary kisses had
been given, without fanfare, she stood back up, and resumed the hike. It was as if the need had been identified,
met, and now she was ready to proceed.
Watching my daughter, I secretly wished
I could be as nurturing and compassionate toward myself as she had been
toward herself.
Maybe I will try.
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