The Way of the Cloud

It is 4:50 a.m. in Kansas. We’re being soaked by another thunderstorm. I’ve been awake for hours, listening more to my thoughts than to the rain.

***
Earlier this week, my teacher and I were talking about the state of the world. I expressed confusion: here in Kansas it was a beautiful, warm, spring day, blue sky, white clouds, green everywhere, while over there, in Iraq, were explosions of unimaginable pain and violence. How can those things co-exist?

A couple of days later, Linc sent me this teaching:

from the Way of the Cloud

As soon as we understand that we live in
exactly the world that we deserve,
we shall recognize the faults of others as our own […]

It is our own Karma that we live in this imperfect world,
which in the ultimate sense is our own creation.

This is the only attitude which can help us […]
because it replaces fruitless negation by an impulse
toward self-perfection

which not only makes us worthy
of a better world, but partners in its creation.

***
I was a little surprised, because from a Zen perspective, there is no self and there is nothing to perfect. So I emailed back: "If I have no self, what is there to perfect?" He replied, "You are correct!"

But there was something else he was saying to me, something I needed to hear.

***
About 4:00 this morning the stream of my thoughts rushed toward the animals we share this planet with. First, I thought about our two indoor cats, safe with us. Then I thought about our outdoor cat, whom we put into the garage last night when the deluge started, keeping warm and dry. Then about the stray who has taken haven on our porch.

All these thoughts appeared in a moment, taking less time than a peal of thunder rolling across the sky.

And then, a quick as lightening, an image came into my mind of all the animals waiting out the storm, rabbits deep in their warren, squirrels high in the trees, raccoon and opossum, stray dogs and cats, birds shaken in the nest, snakes, foxes, bobcats. And I felt so much sadness for them—the flooded burrows, broken nests, suffering and death— that I began to cry.

That’s my humanity.

I began to weave my sadness into praise and self-congratulation, remembering the caterpillar I rescued once, the earwig I tried to saved, re-creating my small self in an image of wisdom and compassion, inflating my own goodness, losing track of reality: the night, the storm.

That too is my humanity.

Another burst of thunder, the inevitable flash of lightening.

***
A couple of weeks ago, the mealy moths started hatching in our kitchen. Everyday I kill two or three or five because if I don’t they’ll overrun our stored food and we’ll have to start throwing it out. I reckon that for every moth I kill, I spare myself the trouble of killing twelve. Sometimes I feel a pang of repentance and say, “I’m sorry.” But just as often I feel annoyance, even anger, especially with the ones that fly away, that won’t sit still and let me crush them.

Sadly, that’s also my humanity. That's how I am exactly like George Bush or any terrorist or a man beating a dog or a child.

***
It's 6 a.m, still dark. The street outside my house is flooded. Passing under the light cast from a neighbor’s security light, the water flows south: the way of the cloud.

In the Dharma,

Christina