When peace is disrupted

Yesterday evening presented some unusual challenges. While my husband was still across the water, I was sitting in my new office typing and heard a very strange sound coming from the kitchen. When I went to investigate, there were streams of water pouring out of the light fixture next to (sadly not over) the sink. Clearly the washing machine had begun to overflow in its new location in the closet above the kitchen.

I grabbed bowls and put them under the worst of the leaks then ran upstairs to investigate and discovered that the washer's drain hose had not been properly hooked up: it had jumped ship with the vibrations from the rinse cycle, and instead of spewing down the drain it was spewing all over the closet floor.

I pushed it back into the drain, dropped towels all over the floor to soak up the water, and ran back downstairs to put more towels around the bowls, and spent the next 20 minutes spreading towels everywhere, replacing damp towels with dry towels, and attempting somewhat unsuccessfully to pry an old unused speaker out of the kitchen ceiling so that the last of the water could exit.

My neighbor came over to help me move the washing machine away from the wall so I could start drying out the rug; we turned on the heat, opened the windows and set up fans. Because I'd had to turn off the circuit breakers for the kitchen, the neighbors invited me over for dinner, and as I sat at their table, eating homemade bean soup and bread and nursing the little cup of sherry they gave me to calm me down, I could feel my adrenaline and pulse rate begin to subside.

By bedtime I was calm again, but I found my brain kept wandering down unfortunate paths. Because life has been very good lately, and, like any cradle Presbyterian, I expect that goodness to come to an end and a parade of calamities to ensue at any moment. All those old voices in my head were chiming in that this was only the beginning, that my period of blessings was over and the trials would begin. With my husband out test-driving motorcycles and two daughters making long plane flights in the near future, I began to feel pretty anxious.

But this morning I woke up and realized how fortunate we were that all this had happened before the closet was done, while our clothes are still lying all over the back room, while we can still access the baseboards to rip them out and roll back the carpet and pad. Because now it will be easy to set up the washer so this won't happen again, or, if it does, so there will be safeguards in place.

So I took my coffee, sat down in relatively good spirits and began reading The Enlightened Heart. But as I read, with the drone of the fans and heaters in the background, my anxiety levels began to rise again. I flipped through several pages of poems that didn't resonate; clearly I wasn't truly calm yet, and I began to worry again that this simple calamity would easily overcome the hard-won peace I have enjoyed so much these last few months.

And then I came to this simple poem by Dogen, called "On the Treasury of the True Dharma Eye:

Midnight. No waves,
no wind, the empty boat
is flooded with moonlight.

The poem filled me with peace. I wondered at that, then accepted the gift. And now, telling the story, I realize the trap I'd been in. Caught in the moment, I'd done everything I could to assuage the damage of our little watery adventure. But afterwards I had begun to leave the moment, to rehash my steps at the time of the outpouring, to wander on into the future and worry what other unpleasant surprises might await me.

Our awareness of the peace of the boat -- empty, no waves, no wind, moonlight -- will always be temporary. Which is why we need to accept and rejoice in it while we have it, just as we step up to the plate when circumstances require quick thinking and action. But the peace itself is always there, under, over and around the surface of things, awaiting the return of our awareness.

Before I began typing in the Dogen poem, I read again the poem on the facing page. By Wu-Men, this poem is even simpler than the other, perfectly profound, and profoundly applicable:

Moon and clouds are the same;
Mountain and valley are different.
All are blessed; all are blessed.


Life will always be full of hills and valleys. But peace, like the moon and the clouds, will remain a constant, though it may not always be in our field of awareness.
And all are blessed.

All are blessed.