How a Fly Changed My Life

This is bout how a fly changed my life. I guess you take your lessons where you find them.

One morning, a fly got into my bedroom. I didn’t think anything about it. When I left the house, I shut the fly in, because I have cats and if I don’t keep my bedroom door closed, they sleep in my laundry, on the bed, leave cat hair everywhere, and I don’t like it.

When I got home that afternoon, the fly was still in my bedroom. You know how flies get when they’ve been cooped up all day. Bzzz bzzz bump bump bump. But I just changed my clothes and went out and did whatever it was I did that evening.

When it was time for me to go to bed, the fly was still there. Bzzz bzzz bump bump.

Because I’m a Zen student and thus wise and compassionate, I decided to try to get the fly out of my room. Really, I wasn’t acting from compassion, but for myself. I need total darkness and silence in order to fall asleep, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep with this fly going bzzz bzzz bump bump bump. So I tried to shoo the fly out the door. But before I could close the door, the fly would do 180 degrees and fly back into the room. After about a half a dozen efforts, I, in my infinite wisdom and compassion decided, “the fly must die.”

I went and got a flyswatter, waited for the fly to land, and swatted. Well, I missed by several inches. Then this thought arose, “Oh, I missed on purpose.” Then a crack appeared across my visual field, and this thought arose, “There’s something here I’m not seeing.” Then the crack disappeared and I was just standing there holding a flyswatter hearing the fly go bzzz bzzz bump bump bump.

I thought, “Oh, maybe I’d better not kill this fly.” I went to bed. The fly and I comfortably cohabitated all night.

In the morning, it occurred to me that the fly must be suffering. It had been trapped in this room for over twenty-four hours with nothing to eat or drink. And when it’s August and your whole imperative is to reproduce and there’s nobody there to reproduce with—well. So I got a water glass and caught the fly and took it outside and let it go. I guess I was feeling a little cynical or something, because I was humming “Born Free” a little under my breath as the fly took off.

Of course, I’ve thought a lot about what it is I don’t see and what that crack appeared in, what cracked. A day or so after this happened, I read an excerpt from a book by a Japanese Zen Master named Katagiri Roshi. He says that there is an invisible world; it sees us, but we don’t see it. But it upholds us and our job is to learn to see it. Based on this I decided that reality itself had cracked a little and that an invisible super-reality had almost revealed itself. But I’ve come to think that this is a mistaken idea.

Zen Master Seung Sahn says that if you can break through the wall of yourself, you will become infinite in time and space. What I think happened is that a very small crack appeared in my self, in what we call the “small self,” the ego, the intricately constructed identity, this “Christina.” And what lies beyond that small self, what it is I didn’t actually see but became aware of, is the interconnection of all beings. And I mean that not as a cool idea or as an ideal, but as an absolute fact. We are all connected. That fly and I were—are—connected.

How has this changed my life? The first change showed up a couple of days later. Margaret and I were preparing a picnic, and we had a can of sardines, and I looked at that can, and I thought, “I can’t eat those fish because I don’t know what that would mean.” Ever since then I’ve been pretty much unable to eat meat, not out of any positive conviction—that it’s wrong to eat meat—but out of a sense of doubt: I just don’t know what it means to eat the flesh of other animals.

The second change was actually the more important. I’ve become very aware of flies. And let me tell you, they are aware of us, and they know what we think of them and what our intentions are. So now, whenever I see a fly, I say, “hello there.”

(Dharma Talk given 02/18/00, Manhattan, KS)

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