3. Is That So?
The Zen master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.
A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near him. Suddenly, without any warning her parents discovered she was with child. This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin. In great anger the parents went to the master.
'Is that so?' was all he would say.
After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the little one needed. A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth - that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fish market.
The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again. Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was, 'Is that so?'
I have pondered over this story for most of my adult life. I can't say, after all this time, that I agree with it in practice, but I do agree in principle.
The philosophy behind this is very Daoist. Accept the world - flow in with the in-current and out with the out-current. Don't try to change the world, you will only spoil it. I know there are other sentiments in this story, but the general principle is one of acceptance of fate.
We just watched the doco on those Canadian teachers who have been imprisoned in Indonesia for sodomising children. The local cleaners also received long prison sentences. Whenever I have been in a situation that fairly or unfairly turned against me, I have fought back with everything I have. I don't let the world have its way. And yet, this is only on the outside.
I am a believer in the the two sides approach. One side is restless and constantly striving to improve my situation, be it work, health or environment. Currently I am struggling to get some window painting done while it is raining, and the paint streaks off. I should just let it be, and wait for a dry day, but I want to finish this, and the extra woodwork, to put up plastic covering on the windows before the next cold weather arrived on Friday. And yet, when I think about it carefully, I realise I don't actually care - it's having an activity that I love to throw myself into that matters. What the activity is, seems irrelevant.
The other side doesn't care very much. It is happy to sit and watch the world pass by, in whatever struggling situation I find myself in. That is the underlying principle, to which I agree with Hakuin. I'm really just filling in time until my life comes to an end.
The problem with this approach, is that on one side I avoid responsibility for serious things that are happening in the world. While on the other side I treat it all as a game, a hobby, which again avoids the seriousness of the world. Where is that part which accepts responsibility? Acknowledges that things do matter? How we act, how we keep abreast with the important matters of our time, where peoples lives are affected, and the environment is being destroyed?
My only answer, is that ultimately I am not responsible. I am responsible within certain limits, certain boundaries of time and energy. But beyond that, I have to retain my ticket to freedom - I have to be able to leave all this behind. No matter what level of burden I shoulder for myself and others, there is a point passed which I accept the world, and pass on.
