“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” — Zen Kōan.
On a flight from Puerto Rico to Houston a couple years ago, I sat next to a man on the plane who was returning from his first trip outside the mainland U.S. I was closing out a weeks-long visiting my family there, time I didn’t know how badly I needed until I arrived and didn’t feel like I could, or really wanted, to leave. Piping hot Puerto Rican coffee in the moka pot every morning, hours-long walks around my family’s technicolor neighborhood, sitting at the ocean’s edge in total peace while also giggling as competing suitcase-sized speakers blasted reggaeton. Questions—and reminders—from my aunt about what I was hurrying around for anyway.
The man next to me was thrilled about his trip, while also being very respectful of my time and space on that packed plane, too. He couldn’t wait to go back, even though he’d had to visit the emergency room for slicing his foot open on a bottle while out skateboarding, I think it was. He’d splurged on his business ticket and I’d been upgraded; his energy and excitement when he heard I had family in PR, that I’d been somewhat often, reminded me again of my deep luck.
After we talked for a bit, I turned back and took out my journal. It was the same version of one I’d been using for years: a monogrammed Shinola journal. “Wow, I have the same one!” he said, and took out his. It was even the same color. I’d bought these for years and gifted them often, and I’ve never seen another one out in the wild. I still haven’t.
He asked what I liked to write about. I told him, a bit of everything, and that I used to write as my “Job,” (capital “J”), burned out from it afterward, and then once I started to mediate found my way back to it, words pouring out, and my writing different. More fluid, more surrendered, more exploratory.
“I meditate, too!” he said, and he asked me about my practice. Sometimes you can feel it—I do. When other people inhabit that liminal space often, when they find a way, despite everything else in our lives today, to total presence, when they’re the type of person or have the type of habits that can allow for just being there with a moment’s totality. It brings it out more in me, too, and reminds me of how things can really beC and the purity of things. For some friends it’s through prayer and faith, others movement; others I’ve met it’s just however they are or whatever they’ve figured out thus far in their lives, and it really works.
My seat mate didn’t practice Vedic meditation (akin to transcendental, a 20-min, twice daily, practice) as I did, but he was as familiar with it. We talked a little about our experiences, what it’s like to sit with all of it and explore both the cosmic and mundane, whatever is being served in those moments of silence.
At that point I’d been practicing for three years. “It’s both subtle and profound, I’ve found,” I told him. “It’s like everything has changed and nothing has changed at the same time.” “Exactly!” he replied. It’s like that Zen joke: “Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” I laughed. I hadn’t heard this before, and it fit. Wouldn’t you know it.
Joke, riddle, axiom, whatever it feels like it is, I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. A lot has started to shift in the world, and especially the U.S., since November 2023, and in ways that hurt my heart and stir my soul. I don’t know what to do often, but I do know that I’ve learned over the years (meditating) that for myself specifically, acting from a place provoked reaction does not improve outcomes for me or have the impact I intend. I need to sit with it a bit. I need to feel it all, and see what comes through on the other side. And, sometimes, that makes me feel like I’m doing nothing, especially when so much seems like it’s unraveling so fast.
I came back to this Zen koan, and draft in blog, when last night my inspiring friend Lilian (and an incredible writer herself https://liliancaylee.substack.com/) texted me and said, “It is people like you and your words who keep me together.”
I thought, and felt like, I’d been doing nothing. And here was a friend sharing how she was gathering strength from my typing on a train, thousands of miles away. Because I came back to something I’ve always felt compelled to do: writing. And because I was reaffirming my belief in something that felt like the only possible thing I can really do, and the only path forward: Be myself. Root into what feels right. “Before [this moment]; chop wood, carry water. After [this moment]; chop wood, carry water.”
I’m doing all the same things, and I’m also doing them differently. I am the same person, and I’m also a different one. We’re all the same, and we’re all different.
We are the revolution, right?
For Lil, and The Good Gossip