JD
November 2005
Bus Stop Zazen
by
Rob Elver
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This morning I walked out my front door into the 30-degree heat of a Canadian summer and the tree-lined street of the suburban neighborhood that’s been my home for more than twenty years. On this hot and humid day, I feel the sun beating down on me, sweat springs spontaneously on my brow and between my shoulder blades. After a five minute wander through a labyrinth of courts, crescents and drives, I come to my destination: a small, grassy hill in front of the bus stop for the number 23 Berkshire. Dropping my backpack onto the lawn, I sit in a half-lotus posture under the shade of the same large spruce tree that has sheltered me for a couple of decades. The angle of the hill and softness of the accumulated spruce needles and turf combine to form a natural cushion for meditation. For about a half hour–I never bother to check the schedule or the time anymore–I watch the cars and people and dogs pass, and slip into the ageless practice of zazen. Who says that only tea ceremonies, sword-play or oriental calligraphy can be modes of contemplation? Why not try riding the city bus? Why not something I’ve come to call “bus stop zazen”. Whether it was coincidence or the ripening of Karma, my practice of zazen and my ascetic practice of riding public transit arose simultaneously. Zazen is one of the central practices of the Zen school of Buddhism, and involves endless hours of sitting in search of the heart of stillness. On the other hand, public transit is one of the central practices of the urbanite, and involves endless hours of sitting still, entering into a sort of hypnotic, hopeless state of stupefaction known to acolytes as “the drift.” Now, I have to make a rather scandalous confession. I am one of the few heretics who, in a world devoted to the automobile, has never even gotten as far as procuring a driver’s license for myself. I’ve never owned a car or paid for a litre of gasoline. How was I led so astray? What heterodox theology lured me from the path of the automotive creed? I have to point to the practice of zazen, of meditation. When others at sixteen were studying up on parallel parking and the rules about right-of-way, I was attending a small (and I do mean small) Zen group in a downtown Tai Chi studio hosted by a Korean Zen student from a nearby Toronto monastery. There I learned the essentials of breath-counting, posture, chanting and walking meditation. After the two- or three-hour sittings, the bus rides home were positive bliss. I swear that it was looking out the large, framed windows of the number 23 Berkshire, impassively watching the industrial knotting of the city pass by like states of aversion and attraction, that I first tasted that state of inverted trance known as Samadhi. After that, I was hooked. Compared to the stressed faces of the drivers I peered down upon from the 15 Westmount, or 10 Wonderland, I coveted my hours spent on the transit system in tranquil Samadhi. A few days without that quiet time, and I would feel the absence. “But look it Rob,” a friend told me once in a suburban roadhouse bar, “you’ve got to get a car. A car, an apartment, a job. That’s what it’s all about. I mean, man, I have no idea how you can stand to ride the bus; it takes hours to get anywhere. Rob, look it. The bus is for people who have nowhere to go and an infinite amount of time to get there.” I stopped to muse over his last line. Certainly worthy of a Hakuin or a Dogen. To this very day, whenever I’m waiting at a bus stop and the bus is late, and I begin to slip into a state of rage or anxiety, I think of that barroom koan. The bus is for those who have nowhere to go, and an infinite amount of time to get there. Not to get too metaphysical, but who among us doesn’t that accurately describe? I remember reading the story of Diogenes of Sinope, the ancient Greek philosopher and perennial advocate of the simple life. After abandoning all possessions, living naked in an old wine tub he pulled from the local dump, he thought he had reached the apogee of simplicity. Then one sunny day in the city market, he saw a small boy cupping his hands at the well and drinking. He immediately went back to his tub, took his begging bowl and smashed it, declaring that the bowl had taught him all it could about simplicity. What has bus stop zazen taught me? I used to worry about time: getting the schedules correct, making sure that I showed up appropriately... Whether it’s karma or just the incompetence of the transit system, the number 23 has freed me of my need for certainty, exactitude or predictability. There’s an old Buddhist adage which promises that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. So too with the number 23. It obeys no exact rules, rarely acting as the schedule says it should. When you’re early, it’s late and when you’re late, it’s early. Even more infuriating than the obscure and compassionate Zen teachers of old, sometimes this automotive guru never appears at all. If I ever had a reason to vent, to harbor ill-will, or encourage states of hatred, the number 23 would provide endless opportunities. But, lost in the consoling drift of meditation, these feelings of aversion become objects of contemplation, forcing me to examine and renunciate. Sometimes I can hear them rustling angrily in the seats around me, you see. The people who usually drive, but who have been forced by Fate to take the bus. They roll their eyes when the driver gets out to buy a coffee, leaving everyone stranded for ten minutes; they constantly check their watches, as cars whizz past reaching destinations ahead of time. They twist and turn in their seats; these drivers, accustomed to the privacy of cars, are now forced to wedge themselves in with strangers. I can only think that they should read the lectures of Dogen, or maybe peruse the koans of the Blue Cliff Records in order to learn how to ride the bus skillfully. Time is irrelevant on the London Transit System. Buses show up and leave of their own accord. Trips that should take ten minutes stretch into an hour. The rules of logic bend and twist like the coils of copulating serpents as an underfunded system makes endless exceptions and accommodations. Lines change route in mid-journey without explanation. Hours are juggled in attempts to service the urban sprawl. And, for the love of all that’s sacred, let us not speak of the dreaded detour. It all says to me that I need to let go of logic, time, attachment to goals. After all, the bus is for people who have nowhere to go and an endless amount of time to get there. A middle-aged woman walks past with her dog and a cart full of catalogues, making some extra money with her deliveries. As she turns her brunette head in my direction, noting my half-lotus posture, she nods hello. I nod back, and hear the low rumble of the number 23 as it turns the corner and slowly, so very slowly, crawls down the street. I pick up my backpack, board, pay my fare and settle in for an hour or so of more zazen. As I look back at the delivery woman, I notice that her panting German shepherd has sprawled himself in my shady place under the large, beautiful Spruce. Copyright © 2005 Rob Elver
Rob Elver is a freelance writer who lives in
London, Ontario (Canada). reply to: [email protected] |