Missouri Zen

Last night we went to the candlelight walk through the Japanese garden. It's designed for quietude and meditation, with little nooks you can duck into and stone paths that lead away from the main walkway. But it was impossible to find a quiet place last night. Everyone was walking the path yelling. Groups of adults spoke loudly, as they measured the distance with their feet and mouths; children cried and screamed, and one little boy was afraid of dragons in the bushes; teenagers shouted at each other, pointed at people, and laughed self-consciously. Daddies reassured babies that it was "only a half-mile to the carp," and I even heard one woman say to her husband: "Get the kids, let's go over there, there's more zen." There was general commotion and hubbub. Everyone kept walking the circular path, making noise all the way.

Here was the world, moving along, making a great din, going nowhere, but intent upon finding some destination. Here were families grouped together, reassuring each other in the dark, telling each other there was some purpose for this walk, that they were "almost there," searching out a more desirable place. Everyone needed to make some sound to been "seen" in the dark, where individuality could melt away, leaving us a single procession of bodies. Whether it's one life or a thousand lives lived in the same manner, this was Samsara: suffering, needing, wanting. Everyone keeps walking around the circle because everyone else is, and we cry to be heard because we're not so terrified by the darkness as by the silence.

And there I was, at first annoyed by their noise and ignorance, then listening to them, paying attention to their conversations, playing my role as the onlooker. I was just as unquiet, although I made no sound.

Finally we just stopped walking. We stopped caring if everyone seeking zen around us kept talking about Branson or dragons in the bushes. We smelled the warm September garden. We saw the candles and lanterns wavering on the water. J.D. pointed out the North Star. We wandered over a rock pathway to a bench by a little waterfall and sat with our foreheads touching, like at our wedding. We both thought about our wedding but didn't say it at the time. We just were.

I'm not a Buddhist, and I don't pretend to understand zen, except I'm pretty sure you can't locate it, quantify it, or buy it as a spray-on in the gift shop (damn). While, I believe in reassuring each other in the general darkness around us, sometimes we most need to just be comfortable with not saying anything. Often the most beautiful place is not a "where"; it's just stopping to be with your companion. If others choose to hurry, screaming through the garden, that's fine; we'll sit and wait; we'll look at the moon.