In one of Oliver Burkeman’s old newsletters he wrote about British-born Zen master Houn Jiyu-Kennett. I read it last Friday afternoon, knee deep in the malaise that can sometimes come at that time, thinking of all the things I didn’t “get” “done” in the week.
Jiyu-Kennett “said of her teaching style that her goal wasn’t to lighten the burden of the student, but to make it so heavy that he or she would put it down.”1
I felt offended, deeply, when I read this, which is to say confronted. Good grief. It’s so good!
I lug around so much heavy stuff, have so many “old, standing arrangements with my psyche..”2 When I hold them up to the light, they range from cumbersome to cruel. These burdens, these stories I tell to myself about myself are as busted as the ones I sometimes tell to myself about you, and about this unassuming planet.
Maybe mercy has to be a bit belligerent to have a fighting chance, pounces out of the shadows, sucker punch to the gut and your white knuckle grip springs open from the shock. You drop it, all that you’d been carrying down the street, you drop it right then and there.