Zen and the Art of Faking It

by Jordan Sonnenblick

  “I don’t feel the cold when I’m meditating.” Yeah, right.

  “Huh. Uhh, how was your morning? You have Starsky for English first period, right? I do too, third period. What did you write about that quote?”

  So I told her the whole thing, and she looked at me all googly-eyed, like I was some kind of Zen master.

  D’oh. I asked Woody what she’d written about, and she told me: “I wrote about how my parents are greedy capitalists, and how I’m totally different from them. Like, we have all this money, and other people have so much less. It doesn’t seem right that we don’t do more to even things out. My dad…oh, never mind. You don’t want to hear about this.”

  I leaned toward her and said, “Sure I do. I want to know all about you.”

  She smiled uncertainly, but started talking again. “My dad’s a dentist, so we’re basically rolling in it. And one day last year, I asked him if I could donate my allowance to the soup kitchen downtown. He got really mad, and said that if ‘those people down there would just get off their butts, they could get themselves a job, no problem. We’re living in the land of opportunity, for Christ’s sake!’ Then he said that since I seemed to feel we have too much for our own good, he would take away half of my allowance until my next birthday. So that’s why I collect money at lunch—so I can donate to the soup kitchen without my dad finding out.”

  And she thought I was the real deal. I wasn’t worthy to wash this girl’s feet. Fortunately she didn’t know that. Which got me thinkin’. “Hey, I’ve been looking for someplace to volunteer. I miss helping out. Do you ever serve food at the soup kitchen or anything?”

  She looked almost scared for a second, and I wondered if maybe she was one of those rich girls who want to help the poor without having to get anywhere near them. “I haven’t so far, but I’d love to start.”

  Do I move fast or what? Before I even opened my delicious Snack Pack pudding (this week’s nearly expired sale item at the local supermarket), I had set up my first date. And my first experience of helping people. I wasn’t sure if the good karma of volunteering would make up for the bad karma of being a complete liar.

  Oh, well. Zen is supposed to be about living in the moment, and for one shining moment, I had pudding to eat and a girl by my side. Which reminded me: “Hey, Woody. Do you take requests?”

  “What do you mean? Like, will I carry your books to class? Because I’m not into being subservient.”

  “No, do you take requests? You know, when you’re singing at lunch. Like, can I ask you to play a certain song?”

  “Uh, I don’t know—nobody’s ever asked me that before. Most kids our age don’t like the same kind of music I like, so…well, what did you have in mind?”

  “There’s this great song called ‘Hard Travelin’,’ by Woody Guthrie. I thought since you’re named after him, and you played ‘I Ain’t Got No Home in This World,’ you might—”

  Her face was glowing as she cut me off in mid-explanation. Wow, I had never made any girl’s face glow before. “I love that song! It’s the first Woody Guthrie song I ever learned to play. It has this really cool guitar pattern called a Travis pick in it. My guitar teacher says…”

  And she was off on a happy tear until the lunch bell rang. She was so ecstatic that she never even asked me how I knew about Woody Guthrie. Of course, I never asked her how she knew about him either—which would have been a great move on my part. But I suppose I have no regrets about that conversation; I figure if you could take back the past, my mom wouldn’t have worn those hideous polyester argyle sweaters in all of her school pictures, right?

  In social studies that day, I was the star of the homework review show. Then we did a lovely work sheet that I totally aced. And next came the best part: Dowd announced that we would be doing a special project on any aspect of Eastern religious tradition we wanted. And when he assigned partners, I found out Woody’s last name: Long. Which happened to come right after Lee and before Petrucci in alphabetical order on the class list. So, I WAS GOING TO BE WOODY’S PARTNER IN CLASS FOR TWO WEEKS! Dowd gave out a big sheet of criteria for the project, and then told us to meet with our partners and brainstorm. He didn’t have to tell me twice. As I was attempting to appear nonchalant and rush to Woody’s side at the same time, I noticed that Peter was off in a corner with some girl named Abby. She was pretty and seemed very nice and friendly, but he was sulking like he’d been sentenced to work for the next ten years with a hunchbacked Nazi.

  Whatev. I had some brainstorming to do. Woody said, “Isn’t this great? I’m so lucky—I get to work with the expert! We’re going to do something about Zen, right?”

  “Uh, I don’t know. There are so many other fascinating aspects of Eastern relig—”

  “You’re kidding, right? You have the edge here, San! We have to capitalize on that.”

  Whoa, this was a new side of Woody’s personality: a competitive streak. But then again, I’d only known her for two days. Plus, I had only been me for two days, so how picky could I be about her quirks?

  “Uh, sure. I guess that’s true. Gotta play to our strengths, right?”

  “That’s right,” she said, blowing on her bangs. “So start giving me ideas, OK?”

  Why not? She was certainly giving me some ideas. “How about I teach you to meditate?”

  “That sounds like fun, but it won’t make much of a presentation. No offense.”

  “Of course not. OK, what if we do a poster project on Zen gardening?”

  “What’s Zen gardening?”

  This girl asked some great questions. And I would even have been able to answer this one if I had just read the fat book instead of the thin book. “Well, it’s kind of complicated to explain to the…uh…Western mind. No offense.”

  “Try me.”

  I’d love to. “Uh, maybe when we have more time.”

  She frowned.

  “Wait!” I exclaimed. I mean, I exclaimed it quietly and calmly. Sort of. “I’ve got it! You want to play to our strengths, right?”

  “Well, I want to play to your strengths. I don’t have any strengths, San.”

  Was she kidding me? How could someone so completely beautiful and individual not know about the strengths she had? “Of course you do: music!”

  “All right, music. But how is me playing the guitar and singing going to help us with a Zen project?”

  “That’s for you to figure out.”

  “OK, then what are you going to do for your half of the deal?”

  I had no freaking clue, so I half smiled inscrutably at her. “You’ll see.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow, Woody. You’ll see tomorrow.”

  Which meant I’d be spending tonight with my good friend Mildred.

  not the true tao

  Did you know it’s possible to read a book about gardening for two straight hours? Unfortunately, it’s not very possible. I had two hours to kill after school before my mom would be home from the hospital and I could drag her to the library, so I decided to read the Zen gardening book really fast. After about ten minutes of grappling desperately with the introduction, I took a break. In true Zen fashion, I made myself a nice big mug of tea. In somewhat untrue Zen fashion, I dumped about three tablespoons of sugar in there and then chugged the whole thing. I was just sitting down for Round Two of my battle with the introduction when the caffeine-and-sugar rush hit. Then I was way too fidgety to pore through the whole intro, so I started just flipping my way around the diagrams and pictures. The concept was pretty simple. A Zen garden was a gigantic sandbox with some gravel and maybe three rocks in it—and, often, no plants whatsoever. So really, calling it a “garden” made about as much sense as calling my sandal a “chocolate factory.” I guess it was an ironic kind of garden. What you did was rake the sand into lines and patterns around the rocks without trying to make any particular picture or shape. If you succeeded in getting yourself into the Zen state of “no-mind”—sort of focused without being focused�
��your garden would flow naturally and perfectly from your unconscious and you would become one with nature. Also, it would look really pretty.

  I had to pee.

  Then I needed another mug of tea. The first one had been so sweet and good.

  When I got back to the table, I looked under one of the garden pictures and found this quote from the Book of Tao: “The Tao which can be spoken of is not the true Tao.” I remembered from Houston that Tao had about five different definitions, but basically meant either “true reality” or “the Way.” If this meant I couldn’t understand the Way of Zen gardening just by reading words, then it was time for some field research. I grabbed a shoebox, cut the sides down until they were only about an inch and a half high, and put on my windbreaker and sandals. Then I ran to the bathroom to pee again. When I finally got out of the apartment, I headed over to the dinky and dilapidated little playground across the street, which had a sandbox. I looked around to make sure nobody was looking, and, sure enough, I was the only idiot out playing in the sandbox in freezing weather. So I scooped up about an inch of sand into my shoebox and jogged back across the street, not much enjoying the feeling of icy sand between my toes. Then I realized my garden wasn’t complete yet, and bent down to grab a couple of little stones. This made me spill my sand, so I had to run back to the sandbox and get some more sand. Some old biddy came creaking around the corner of the playground with her walker, saw me, and said, “Excuse me! What do you think you’re doing?”

  I felt like saying, A fascinating philosophical query! What do you think I’m doing? or I’m stealing sand. Don’t you know it’s the new craze among people who still have teeth nowadays? But that would have prolonged the encounter, and I had to get back into the apartment. And pee some more. So I just said, “School project,” and darted away, trying to balance my handful of pebbles, my box of sand, and the needs of my screaming bladder. She shouted after me, “What ever happened to reading and writing?” but I was already halfway across the street.

  Note to self: It’s hard to attain a state of no-mind when you’re incredibly pumped up on tea and sugar and have to urinate every three and a half minutes. The Zen garden was kind of intriguing, though. When my mom got home, she found me raking patterns in it with four sharpened pencils taped together side by side. And walking in little circles around the kitchen and living room. And making the occasional beeline for the plumbing facilities. When I showed her what I’d been doing—my garden masterpiece—she looked at me and laughed. “This isn’t like you, San. You’re taking the initiative. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you jump into schoolwork like this before. Not that I’m complaining, but why the change?” She cocked her head to one side. “Is this about…a girl?”

  I paced and snorted, snorted and paced. “Yeah, right. A girl! Like girls are just swarming to scrawny new kids who like to play with sand. Like I’m some irresistible only-minority-kid-in-whiteville superstud. Like—”

  “Oh, come on, San! I was just wondering,” she said as she walked out of the room to change out of her work clothes. She hated her work clothes, especially those clunky rubber-soled nurse shoes. “Whatever is motivating you, keep it up, OK?”

  What’s with the “keep it up” thing? Was it, like, the town motto of Harrisonville? I couldn’t think about it too hard, because we had a library to visit. I went to put the lid on my garden, and screamed an embarrassingly shrill scream. There was a spider—a brown and hairy spider—upside down inside the lid. I started smacking the lid against the garden in a panic. Any second the spider might skitter around from below and bite my hand. Yikes! My mom came running, but stopped and sighed when she saw the cause of my horror.

  “Oh, Sanny, it’s only a little house spider. They’re friendly. They eat bad bugs.”

  Great, the fact that they are terrible venomous insect carnivores was very comforting. “Can you kill it, Mom?”

  By this time the spider had fallen down into the bottom of the box. Now I had a Zen phobia garden. How special! Mom brushed me aside, shooed the spider onto the second-biggest pebble, and carried the stone, spider and all, out of the apartment, down the stairs, and out onto the scrubby front lawn. I watched in disgusted awe as she wiped the spider gently off the rock and into the grass. Then I went to the bathroom and peed while she climbed back up. When I got back to the table, Mom had put the arachnid-tainted rock back into the garden.

  Yuck-o.

  With some begging on my part, I finally got her to take the rock back out of the garden and leave it by the front walk on the way to the library. All the way up the block, though, she insisted on blabbing on about how wonderful spiders were, ecologically important, a marvel of biology, blah blah blah. You know, cobras are pest-eating marvels of biology too, but you don’t see me rushing to scatter them about the apartment.

  I marched my mother right up to the library’s information desk and rang the bell. I was in a hurry, very aware of two things: I wanted to get a lot of reading done, and I didn’t want to be seen in a public place with my white mom—which would kind of blow my whole “Super-Asian” persona right out of the water, especially if anyone started asking her any questions about our life. There was a rustling in the little back room, and I allowed myself a moment of hope that the lovely Amanda would soon appear. Instead, Mildred came out. She was in a pink sweater with bows over a dark green skirt with tights, which gave her a sort of “grasshopper out on the town” look. She was happy to see me. “Ah, San Lee! I was hoping you’d come back today. Two other students from your school were here already this evening, getting information for your world religions project…”

  OH, NO!

  “But I knew you had all the good books on Zen in your reserve pile, so I steered them toward Hinduism and Confucianism.”

  OH, YES! Thank you, Mildred!

  My mom thanked Mildred and introduced herself: “Hello, I’m Diane Lee, San’s mother. Thank you for helping him out yesterday. I’ve never seen him so excited about a school project.”

  “Well, Mr. Dowd works wonders. Every year at this time, children I’ve never seen before, even though they were born in this town, come stumbling into the library in droves to get cards just for his project.”

  They smiled at each other for a moment, sharing some secret adult satisfaction of breaking in another generation to the yoke of book slavery. Then, while they filled out the rest of the form for my card, I wandered around a bit. I looked down one aisle and couldn’t help noticing that Amanda was reshelving books about twenty feet from me. She saw me, smiled, gestured in a circle, and mouthed one word: “Books!” I started to smile back, but then she ducked down to reach a low shelf and I saw a horrific vision behind her. Peter was walking toward me, with his face buried in what looked like an encyclopedia.

  I ducked into the next aisle before he could look up and catch me being a fake, adopted, research-based Buddhist. I sat down on a step stool so I could peek at Amanda and Peter between the shelved books. Peter was talking with her and I could hear some of what she was saying, too: “Popular topic lately…I’m not really the expert, but…”

  She moved down a few feet; Peter followed, and so did I. I grabbed a book out of the shelf between us so I could see and hear better. Glancing at it, I had a shock. It was called Zen in the Art of Archery. What were the chances I had wound up in the Zen aisle again? I heard Amanda say, “Lucky boy! You’re just one aisle away from what you need.”

  Geez, she’d called me “lucky boy” yesterday. My luck was running out fast. Peter walked by, heading toward my right. I scurried to my left at top speed, and got around the corner before they started up the Zen aisle. I leaned back against the cool gray metal of the shelf edge with a sigh of relief. Just then I heard my mom’s voice calling me. “San! Sanny!” I was thinking, Shoot me now, as I scurried back to the info desk before she could get even louder.

  Skidding up next to her I said, “Ssssshhhhh! Mom, this is a library!”

  She was momentarily stunned by my fierce su
pport for library rules, but then snapped back, “Darn, I thought we were in KFC! Guess I can’t check out that bucket of extra-crispy, then. Relax, San. Here’s your card.”

  She handed it to me. Wow, my first Pennsylvania library card. And it was still warm from the laminating machine! “Uh, thanks, Ma,” I said. “Now let’s go!” I took her by the arm and started steering her in the direction of the checkout line. Then Mildred called after us, “Hey, Zen in the Art of Archery! I must have missed that one yesterday. It’s an oldie but goodie. You’re quite the little researcher, San. Mrs. Lee, your boy is pretty quick in the stacks.”

  I thought, You have no idea, Mildy baby. I gave her a little thank-you wave over my shoulder, and we got into the checkout line. I was trying to stare unobtrusively at the ends of the stacks, waiting for Peter to pop out and bust me with the huge stack of Zen books that the checkout lady was loading into my arms. I could feel the cold sweat of fear dripping down the back of my neck as my mom asked the desk lady question after question about our library privileges, the branch’s hours, and even where to get a good cappuccino in town on a budget, but we got away clean.

  As far as I knew.

  We set out, and when we got outside it had started to snow lightly. All the way home, I felt like my arms were about to break off, and my bladder was at its limit, primed to explode like a liquid piñata. My mom asked me if I wanted to stop at a coffee shop around the corner for a bargain cappuccino and I almost died on the spot—I was never going to ingest caffeine again. I smiled weakly and told her I was just too excited about getting back to my research to stop for anything.

  Ten grueling minutes later I was in my little room, sitting in the zazen position with the archery book on my lap. One thing about my new spiritual practices: They helped you if you were too poor to afford a desk. And this book would help if you were too poor to afford sleeping pills. It was skinny, but way hard to read. I got the basic point, though: This German guy went to a great archery Zen master in Japan, and studied with him for six years. Then he wrote the book. What he learned is that in order to become a true master of anything, you have to repeat it over and over again with precisely correct form. Then eventually, if you truly get the form down to the point where you are totally unconscious of what you are doing, you will be a master.