"There’s a Zen story in which a man is enjoying himself on a river at dusk. He sees another boat coming down the river toward him. At first it seems so nice to him that someone else is also enjoying the river on a nice summer evening.
Then he realizes that the boat is coming right toward him, faster and faster. He begins to yell, “Hey, hey, watch out! For Pete’s sake, turn aside!” But the boat just comes right at him, faster and faster. By this time he’s standing up in his boat, screaming and shaking his fist, and then the boat smashes right into him. He sees that it’s an empty boat.
This is the classic story of our whole life situation. There are a lot of empty boats out there. We’re always screaming and shaking our fists at them."
Reading this, I came to realize that most of what was snarking at me was simply that: empty boats. Events were just playing out in natural sequences. There was no point in shaking my fist; the only difficulties were the ones I was creating for myself with the stories I was building around them.
In staying with that, understanding it was my story, something released in me; something came to peace. It's not really that the situation has changed appreciably; it's more that I'm coming to accept responsibility for my part in it.
It's a bit like a divorce: it's so easy to want to throw stones and blame your partner for all the messes that drove you away. But in a lot of ways the things that came along to rip the marriage apart were empty boats; old patterns and needs playing themselves out and wreaking destruction on both your lives.
And now I'm wondering: if we are not fully present, aware, conscious, mindful, in the moment -- might we not also be empty boats, wreaking havoc in other people's lives?
Hmmm...
5 comments:
I wouldn't want to say that we ourselves are "empty boats"; rather, that we carry them along with us, sometimes keeping them well-tethered and other times letting them become unmoored. If we can be aware of them in the moments when they become undone and threaten, we stand the better chance of pulling them back in. When they drift we have to be prepared for the circumstances.
Cool way of looking at that. Maybe we are not the boats, but our egos are? I know mine comes untethered from time to time... But mostly the damage it seems to do is to me. Hmm. Maybe the ego is a weaver of stories, and the stories become boats? Such fun images to contemplate...
Or... others perspections place us in the water with them as empty boats as they too are writing stories about goings on around them that are better left just to flow with the tides rather than be fished in.
Your images are always helpful to contemplate. I'm thinking of you as I sit in a friend's condo in Kent, while we are up in the NW for four days. We were amazed by the sunshine for our first two days here.
Also, prayers for trust and hope to continue.
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