The Last Word On Nothing

Yesterday I went down to the river with my sister – the only rational activity in this godawful heat wave – and we waded in up to our waists, squinting into the late afternoon sun. We swam until our blood cooled, then perched on a rock midstream, watching the green water spiral away in eddies and ripples and sparkle all around us. 

Across the river, a family was camped out on the beach under a pop-up tent, kids in floaties, dad casting his line far out into the current and smoking a joint. Someone was grilling and it smelled amazing, a mix of barbecued meat and hot blackberries. (When it’s 103 degrees here, as it’s been for several weeks now, or close to it, the blackberries smell like cobbler, or more precisely, like the burning sugar that sizzles on the bottom of my stove and sets off the smoke alarm, every time.) 

We toweled off and sat on the shore. Inspired by Cameron’s post, I had brought a peach with me, my first one of the summer. I started to eat it while Adrienne read aloud from the book we’re currently reading about Buddhism, aptly named Don’t Take Your Life Personally. I didn’t used to read many books from the spiritual or self-help sections of the bookstore, but these days I’ll take all the help that I can get. Besides, there’s at least some evidence that meditation is good for neurotic people like myself (or at least, not worse than a placebo.)

Now, Adrienne and I don’t have a spotless track record when it comes to spiritual development. Several times, when we have tried taking yoga together, I have laughed so hard that I cried, been forced to leave class, or peed my pants. But we have the best intentions.

We settled in, ready to discover our inner spaciousness. “By trusting in awareness,” Adrienne read, “you will see that anxiety or self-aversion is what it is, and you will also see that you are allowing it to do what it is meant to do, which is to change – it arises, it ceases.” As she read, a Canada goose waddled toward us, looking for a handout. “As you gain more confidence,” Adrienne said, “you will see states of mind drop away. If you are patient and willing to receive them, they will do that, they will drop away, and you will feel peace of a kind you perhaps didn’t know was possible.” The goose was closer now, hissing and sticking its skinny tongue out. I could see its tiny teeth. It wanted a chunk of peach, and wasn’t going to take no for an answer. “Go away!” Adrienne commanded. “SsSSSSSsss!!” It hissed back. 

The peace, Adrienne continued, “is not a tranquility that comes from shutting out irritating conditions, but is from non-attachment and letting things be what they are.” More geese had arrived on the scene. “SSSSSSSsssSSSSS!!!” they chanted. I gobbled down the rest of my peach, unwilling to share even a scrap, then threw the pit in their direction. “Be gone, demons of the lower realm!” I yelled. “Any powerful emotion that dominates your consciousness and which you accept, just drops away,” Adrienne continued, valiantly. “What is left, to me, is like bliss.”

Discouraged by a hail of pebbles and more shouting, the army of geese retreated, but only by a few feet. “Do you still want to sit and meditate?” Adrienne asked. 

“I mean, we could,” I said. “But we don’t really need to. I’ve had my bliss — and by bliss I mean peach — already.”

THE END