I read this bit in one of Thich Nhat Hanh’s books in Thailand about 16 years ago, and it cleansed and simplified my mind in the same way that he washed a bowl. Usually we talk about dropping a pebble into a pond and never knowing where the ripples end up, as a metaphor for doing good works. But this small essay had the opposite effect. My mind was a pond ever full of ripples, blessedly stilled for a change by these words.
“To my mind, the idea that doing dishes is unpleasant can occur only when you aren’t doing them. Once you are standing in front of the sink with your sleeves rolled up and your hands in the warm water, it is really quite pleasant.
I enjoy taking my time with each dish, being fully aware of the dish, the water, and each movement of my hands. I know that if I hurry in order to be able to finish so I can sit down sooner and eat dessert or enjoy a cup of tea, the time of washing dishes will be unpleasant and not worth living. That would be a pity, for each minute, each second of life is a miracle. The dishes themselves and the fact that I am here washing them are miracles!
If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have dessert or a cup of tea, I will be equally incapable of enjoying my dessert or my tea when I finally have them.
With the fork in my hand, I will be thinking about what to do next, and the texture and the flavor of the dessert, together with the pleasure of eating it, will be lost.
I will be constantly dragged into the future, miss out on life altogether, and never able to live in the present moment.
Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred. In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane.
I must confess it takes me a bit longer to do the dishes, but I live fully in every moment, and I am happy.
Washing the dishes is at the same time a means and an end. We do the dishes not only in order to have clean dishes, we also do the dishes just to do the dishes, to live fully in each moment while washing them, and to be truly in touch with life.”
In my memory of first reading that, he used the words “wash the bowl”. They became a kind of mantra for me when my mind became too busy and anxiety ate me up. Like a magic spell, they whisked me right back into the clear here and now. Still do.
These ‘chicken bowls’ are a very northern Thailand thing. I found a tiny version, about the diameter of a two-Euro coin, and for a while kept it as an aide for getting instantly into the ‘wash the bowl’ mindset.
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But the ripples, they of course continued. And when I think of ripples I think of the quote by Robert F Kennedy from his 1966 speech in Cape Town, which I kept on my office wall at Cardiff Law School through seven long, hard, satisfying years of working quietly towards justice. (Then, in Korea, met his daughter Kerry, who indirectly led me to Thailand in the first place, making my life more painful and more complicated for a while but leading me to a truer picture of myself and what ‘doing good’ really means).
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice. He sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance.”
There’s another aspect to being ‘zen’, I’ve found. It can be interpreted as being a bit floaty. As being so focused on an empty mind that there’s a disengagement from the world, not just ‘detachment’. It can be very self-involved, removing one from others and the woes and problems of the world. How does one reconcile ‘wash the bowl’ mind with the passion sometimes needed to work at leaving the world better than one found it? Can you be zen and Tank Girl?
This tension hadn’t really occurred to me until I read this poem by Laura Kasischke.
I am the coward who did not pick up the phone
I am the coward who did not pick up the phone, so as never to know.
So many clocks and yardsticks dumped into an ocean.I am the ox which drew the cart full of urgent messages straight into
the river, emerging none the wiser on the opposite side, never looking
back at all those floating envelopes and postcards, the wet ashes of
some loved one’s screams.How was I to know?
I am the warrior who killed a sparrow with a cannon. I am the
guardian who led the child by the hand into the cloud, and emerged
holding only an empty glove. Oh —the digital ringing of it. The string of a kite of it, which I let go of.
Oh, the commotion in the attic of it — in the front yard, in the back yard,
in the driveway — all of which I heard nothing of, because I am the
one who closed the windows and said, This has nothing to do with us.In fact, I am the one singing this so loudly I cannot hear you even now.
(Mama, what’s happening outside? Honey, is that the phone?)
I am the one who sings, The bones and shells of us.
The organic broth of us.
The zen gong of us.Oblivious, oblivious, oblivious.
Can you see the need to work towards peace, not closing the window on it, can you work towards that peace, and still feel at peace? Can you both do that work and wash the bowl? Can you even remember both from day to day? Perhaps if you’re a Buddha?