living dharma

The other day – the day before leaving Morning Sun on the slow boat to Plum Village (actually not a boat, but a car….actually two cars, all my very few remaining possessions in one and then the other – slow relay race style, one kinda hip Vermont town and a Canadian customs official who did not even want to look at passports as we came into Canada on our way to Ottawa, the eerily Groundhog Day staging ground for all my recent adventures) – I was up early as I tend to be. I’d made my way through the incredibly lovely forest to the house I lived in mostly since October (I moved into a hard to describe for its being so beautiful cabin a bit more than a month ago – in the Morning Sun universe). As I sat on the back porch sipping my final vice (strong coffee) looking out over the misty field, I saw a very pretty cow hove into view.

I knew this cow. Know this cow. Fairly well; she’s been grazing the pasture behind our house since late spring. But this time she was on the wrong side of the fence. Or so would be the view of her owners. It was my view too, since I am friends with her owners and since there is a road near by where she could wander and both meet with and cause great misfortune.

A gift. In the Plum Village practice we are encouraged to look to daily life as the source of objects for our meditation. A cow wandering potentially into harm’s way was perfect (which I realized after Michael and I managed to get her back on the “right” side of the fence, no small feat for a couple of very journeyman Buddhist cowboys).

What was I keeping the cow safe from? The road obviously. But by getting her back where farm reality would have her, I was just making sure she would be available for long-term exploitation at the dairy up the road or an early execution at the local slaughterhouse. So, safe to be moved along the supply chain of quasi-artisan food production in New Hampshire. Safe too for the folks hauling up and down the Gilsum Mine Road; they would not careen into her and damage their fine vehicles or themselves or family members riding shotgun.

Safe I suppose from a less orderly demise than the agricultural machine would deliver at some point. Safe from a cougar, should there be any left in New Hampshire. Safe from a posse of coyotes. Safe from a rogue bear. Safe from those kinds of messy deaths.

Anyway. It got me thinking. When we are presented with these moments we end up responding in a variety of roles, consciously or not so much. For me I suppose the relevant ones that I understand myself in these days are practitioner of Buddhism, citizen of some sort (mostly Canada if pressed but more post-modernly of the world), father, community member (along with my sense of responsibility to my friends who “own” the cow in question), incipient monk, vegetarian and food wonk…..other roles too as conditions call forth.

It is interesting to see how all these roles stack up. Are they consistent? Does one massively contradict the other? Is there a sort of internal Sisyphean feedback loop, where the results of one role cancel or mess the aims and intentions of another? Are we in harmony with ourselves and the world around us really.

And all this reminded me of the Buddha’s teaching on releasing our cows, where cows represent the burden of our possessions and the churn required to make our way through the machine of economics, ownership, livelihood etc.

If she had been “mine” to release I think I woulda.

P.S. The photo is of the cabin where I spent July and a bit more. Yes. Lucky. Very. I know.