The Sunbather

Every afternoon that the clouds are not obstructing the sun, I become a sunbather. I do not wear sun tan lotion nor do I take any of the typical modern precautions against the sun. I am a sun lover and I do not see its golden rays as a threat. I’m afraid of many things in my life but the sun does not seem to be one of them. Instead, I strip down into the nude and shower in the sun light in the same way that I imagine a religious practitioner would bathe themselves in their god or goddess. I see the benefits of sun: a darker complexion, uplifted mood, more sex appeal and higher vitamin D3 levels. As far as I am concerned sun exposure is equally as important as a regular exercise.

However, sunbathing is not without its disadvantages. I have been sunbathing since I was a skinny youth but now that I am in my early forties I am noticing a new, less enjoyable experience when I sunbathe. For as long as I can remember sunbathing has been pure pleasure. Time well spent. Pleasurable abandon. But now after about twenty minutes or so of “laying out” in the sun I notice this unpleasant feeling creeping over me. It is a sensation that is usually accompanied by a metallic sensation in my mouth and a slight pulsation in my temples. I am naked and stretched out on my sun lounger with the sun light showering down all over me yet I am very uncomfortable.

Birds and various other forms of wild life will be active all around me yet my thoughts and a feelings seem to be tethered by a negative and unsatisfied quality. These feelings and thoughts make it very difficult for me to be still. I feel like I should be doing something else, accomplishing more, working more, being more ambitious. I notice this voice in my head that repeats words like “lazy,” “depressed,” “unambitous,” “failure,” ‘looser.” The feelings in my body seem to be shouting, “Get going! You should be doing anything but wasting afternoon after afternoon doing nothing! You do not deserve to do nothing!”

If you were to look at me stretched out on my sun lounger you would think that I am a man without a care in the world. You would not know that inside there is a battle going on between the forces of being and doing. You would not know that I am feeling like I am wasting my life and am terrified of going broke because of my laziness. You would not know what a great effort it is taking to stay still on that sun lounger.

In Eastern philosophy they talk a lot about people like me. When reading books that have an Eastern philosophy influence, I often come across the opinion that people in the West suffer so much because they are stuck in an endless cycle of doing and as a result our minds are always focused on things outside of ourselves. The moment that we stop and turn our minds inward we are confronted with the negative effects of always doing and focusing outwards. There is an immense amount of guilt, discomfort and negativity that is present because we feel that we need to be doing something. In order to avoid these uncomfortable feelings and thoughts we continually do things! Anything to avoid sitting still. While laying out on my sun lounger I am aware of this, yet this awareness does not seem to make enjoying the afternoon sun any easier.

I suppose I have been conditioned by that capitalistic logic which says I do things, therefore I am. I suppose when I am not doing anything my very being gets put into question. Who am I? What am I doing? Do I matter? Am I wasting my life? Maybe the intensity of these uncomfortable thoughts and feelings are the result of the fact that I am older now and am aware that I have less time left on this earth to “make my mark.” When I was younger I would spend my entire days “laying out” in the sun. Lazy and without a care in the world. I had plenty of time then.

Or maybe my uncomfortable feelings are more the result of social conditioning. Maybe in the culture where I live a man is expected to have made something of himself by the age of 40. He is expected to be financially independent and accomplished by the age that I now am. If he is not, then he is seen as a loser, a failure. Maybe now when I am laying out in the afternoon sun the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that are present are the result of my father, my mother, my sister, my in-laws, my wife, my government, my teachers, my culture all telling me that I need to do something with my life! However the irony is that I feel that the most productive and important thing a human being can do at this stage in our overly productive and destructive history is learn how to enjoy just being. To stop doing so much and spend as many afternoons as they can sunbathing.

Floating Around Limbo

Sometimes I wonder about my contributions to this world. What am I doing? What is my reason for being here? For the last month or so I have been in a kind of limbo. This limbo is a comfortable place. There is no rent to pay, no ambitions to fill, no reason really to do anything at all. Day upon day looks the same, feels relatively similar (with some occasional sharp divots in the road). The interesting thing is that in this limbo I float about two feet from the ground. Why I find this interesting is because for most of my life my mother and father made me feel guilty about not having both feet firmly planted on the ground. They have often used the metaphor of floating to describe the way that I exist in this world. Now in my middle age, the mid-afternoon of my life, day after day- I am actually floating. Take that mom and dad.

Did I mention how comfortable this limbo place feels? Imagine jumping inside of the softest down comforter. No even better than that- imagine spending the day lying face up on the softest of white sand beaches. This is what this limbo that I am in feels like. Love materialized. Would you want to leave this place? You float around all day, get tanned by the sun, read in the evenings and watch as the ambitious world runs by. It is really not a bad deal- but like most deals, it does have its downside.

I sat with a ninety-two year old Zen master the other day. To my surprise he was floating as well. Except the place in which he floated he would never refer to as a limbo, instead he likes to call it eternity. Why was I floating around with a Zen master the other day you might be wondering? Feel free to ask. Well, I will just tell you. I went to this specific zendo where I knew that this Zen master could be found. I went to him because of the thoughts that I began this story with. I was wondering about what my place in this world was. If day after day I was just floating around in limbo then what real point is there to my existence? If I was doing nothing constructive in this world, had no ambition to get both of my feet firmly planted on the ground- then how was I going to survive in this ambitious, both feet on the ground kind of world. To be blunt- what the fuck was I doing with my life?

When I asked the Zen master these questions (I am sorry to use the cliche name of Zen master to describe this remarkable man but this man does not have a name. I am not even sure if he exists in the same reality that all of us other mortals do. As he likes to say- “he is here but not here at all.”). What was I just saying? Oh yeah- when I presented the Zen master with my inner conflicts he just smiled at me. I thought that he was going to laugh but instead he smiled and floated, smiled and floated. As we floated together there in the zendo, me in limbo and he in eternity, he kept saying “Weee!! Weeeee are floating!!” He expressed this sentiment in the same way that a child swinging on a swing would express joy. “Weeeee!!” “Weeeee!!!” he kept saying as if he was ignoring the very reason why I had floated over to see him. And then like a sudden earthquake or a stroke of insight he said “when floating just float, be floating– nothing else to do. When not floating then act accordingly.” At first I did not know what to make of his strange statement. I knew there was some pearl of wisdom that I needed to fish out from what he said but I was not sure yet how to get the fish off the fishing line. So I thanked him for his time and I floated back to my limbo.

Today the temperature has been in the 90’s. There is not a cloud in the sky. I have drawn a bit in my sketchbook, I have read a bit and I have been listening to some music. I have eaten lunch and breakfast and even found time to meditate. No one goes hungry or gets bored in limbo. I can hear the rumblings of the outside world in the distance. All the people moving quickly to get things done creates a certain vibration that can not only be heard but also felt in limbo. Sometimes this vibration makes me nervous- as if I too should be marching a long, moving quickly and getting things done. I too feel like I am possibly missing out if I just float around here all day and night in my quiet and relatively safe limbo. It is a strange feeling to wrestle with all day in limbo. On the one hand I feel so blessed to not be apart of that endless march to the finish line to get things done. I feel so blessed to get to just float around my house and garden without any real, pressing worries. But at the same time I feel like I am missing out. That there are important things that I should be getting done now. This strange tension between satisfaction and dissatisfaction is the force that often makes limbo a difficult place to remain in.

Weeeee!! Weeeee!!!! I shout out as I float around the house and backyard. Weeee!! Weeeeeeee!!! I shout out as I listen to music or eat my lunch. The thrill of this satisfaction lasts a minute or two but then, on a normal day, I am left feeling like something is missing. What a pain in the ass. Maybe the Zen master is without a name because in truth- he does not exist. The other day I was not speaking to an actual man as much as I was speaking to a state of being. The Zen master dwells in eternity, which is where we all dwell forever if we just sit down and shut up for long enough to realize this. Why not start now? Granted he is a master and we are not- he got there quicker than most mortals ever will but still Zen master eternity is a place, a state of being in which I strive to dwell. To float around and just float around. When/if the time comes that I am no longer floating around in limbo- then I trust I will act accordingly. Maybe. Weeeee!! Back to my book.

What Is The Sound Of One Hand Clapping?

I finally figured out the answer to the question, “what is the sound of one hand clapping?” I have been told that this question stems from an ancient Zen Koan and has been contemplated for centuries. No one as of yet has discovered the appropriate answer and this includes millions of monks who have been sitting in meditation for hours a day doing nothing but trying to imagine what the sound could be. This question has been researched, studied and investigated until all possible answers have been exhausted. And I, an ordinary mortal who is stuck in between the heavy suitcases of an ordinary existence has happened upon the answer. Like a disorganized deck of cards- fate has a funny way of orchestrating itself into a steady rhythm. Why things are the way they are- I am the last to be able to give a logical explanation. All that I know is that I am a tired man who is still searching for his dreams in a rented apartment which is cold and filled with half read underlined books. Answers seldom come my way but when they do I want to share them with the world. “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” a homeless man said to me today hoping to seduce coins from my shallow pockets. “Who cares,” I said as I cynically made my way past him with a stare of blank disregard. “Who cares,” “who cares?” I repeated to myself as if I had just discovered an ancient riddle. I stopped in my tracks  and turned with a smile of discovery upon my face to listen to the homeless man who was shouting over and over…” you got the answer, you got the mother fucking answer!!!”