Running For The Bus
The 2,000-year old man, as embodied by Mel Brooks, was asked to share his greatest wisdom by Carl Reiner. The 2,000-year old man had just a few, simple lessons to expound, one of which was, “Don’t run for the bus.”
Alan Watts wrote an eccentric essay about clothing in which he called on western men to abandon our customary trousers and wrap ourselves in colorful sarongs instead. He anticipated one objection – how does one run to catch a bus if their legs are swathed skirtlike in cotton fabric? To this, he responded with a wave of the hand, “What self-respecting person would run for a bus?”
In February, I suffered a fall while running. It was a footrace against Time. Time had become a ghostly train bearing down on me, and it felt urgently necessary to rush. I was the breakfast cook on a Zen retreat in Rhode Island, and had exactly 49 minutes to prepare oatmeal for 10 people. I discovered the monastery kitchen was out of rolled oats – my fault for not checking the supply. To get more, I would need to put on winter clothes, descend a hill, and raid the Zen Center’s kitchen down the road. This I did, in haste.
The first real snowstorm of the winter had left more than a foot of fresh snow on the ground, and it was no light jog down the road past the pond. The shape and size of time was transforming itself like a scene from a horror movie, in which a small creature violently distorts and grows into a raging, howling beast. If it took me three minutes to reach the Zen Center kitchen, it felt like fifteen, and my concentration was occupied with a vision of cold, uncooked oats at breakfast time. Oh, the embarrassment, to be so incompetent and to disappoint all of my brothers and sisters.
With my bucket full of rolled oats, I hit the ground again to dash up the hill and get breakfast underway. My thinking, which had been pounding away in my head along with my heartbeat, suddenly cleared up and a voice said to itself, “Everything is fine.” Ah, the relief. A big smile. Everything was fine. There was no problem. I was on top of the situation, and I knew I was in good hands myself, so everything would be fine.
BAM.
Face down. Snow in my mouth and ears. I had hit my head, and hard. I had also ripped my pants. I lay there stunned. Time disappeared. The Greek chorus shut up. I felt foolish – not in the sense of being embarrassed. It was a relief, like someone turning off a radio that had been blasting. I had been rushing around carelessly, believing everything my panic was telling me. Here was the result.
We humans are in a frenzy to catch the bus. How much do we understand about the bus we’re trying to catch? What is it about the bus that makes us run? Do we really fear that if we miss that bus, we’re not going to go anywhere? As if going nowhere was possible; as if it were possible to know for certain where we were going, spinning around on this orb and most of us ignorant of what we truly desire.
The Greek chorus in our heads is always making something. The Greek chorus is always pointing at one bus or another, yelling, “Run! Run!” For the most part, we do it. Sometimes we fall and hurt ourselves and for just an instant, when we feel foolish, we are awake. Sadly, we shake the clarity off very quickly. With a curse, I came to my knees and then to my wet feet. Even with this spontaneous exploration of gravity, the oatmeal was cooked just right at 7:30 AM. There was never any danger of missing the bus; I had been on it the whole while.
There is a time for moving fast. There may even be a time for running to catch a bus or to fetch a bucket of oats. Constricting clothing may be a hazard, but constricting thought is a hazard no matter what we are wearing. Time is not a train from which we need to run; as soon as we think of time, there isn’t enough of it. There is also no lack of it. Moving swiftly to get something done is clear. Running away from a dream (literally!) does not accomplish our goal and is unclear.
See, the dangerous thing is not running. The dangerous thing is to run for a bus when we don’t know where we’re going.
June 15th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
Well put. That’s my problem: I’m in such a hurry to go somewhere that I have no idea where I’m going.
June 15th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Walk like a man
Frankie Valli
One might add, “and sing like a girl” but that would be fatuous, superfluous, and silly. Great story, well told and nicely illustrated.
“So what?” is what I make of this “walk, don’t run” thinking, and I applaud your snowy parable in June.
I understand from my high school classmate, Mr. David Caruso, that actors ask “What’s my motivation?” which is yet another perspective, I think.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” seems also to fit.
Running so that a number of Buddhists might have their oatmeal on time is probably not the best use of one’s energy.
Were they even inclined to kill you (highly unlikely in their weakened state), they probably would not have eaten you.
Not worth breaking the proverbial sweat over, as it turns out.
Had you not been in wintry New England, perhaps the running would not have been such a risk.
The “No-mind” approach is to apply this thinking in the real world, with the expectation that its universal applicability proves its truth.
For me, the bottom line is “Run like hell when it makes sense, but not for arbitrary reasons.”
I try to apply this Zen principle in a self-defense clinic I ran for senior citizens.
Conventional wisdom was once to follow the gunman’s demands, which today leads to pretty much certain death as a worst-case scenario.
Just as the earliest jaywalkers disregarded traffic signals and crossed between corners (today, only German tourists appear to heed the rules, being our twenty-first century “jays”), so many of our other urban behaviors need to be adjusted to fit our changing circumstances.
There is a 50% chance the assailant won’t fire, as abruptly turning and running away might take him by surprise (or the safety may be on, or the pistol might misfire).
If reducing the chances to 1 in 2 that I might live, electing to run on ice is probably not a bad way to go under those circumstances.
There is a 50% chance that the bullets may miss one altogether.
Another 50% probability of an incapacitating or serious wound.
What are the chances?
One theoretically runs a nice 87.5% statistical probability of survival by following your advice of not panicking but instead doing what’s best.
Although in this instance, running is definitely recommended, in my humble.
I personally find an embarassing fall preferable to being shot, but rather inferior with respect to inconveniencing a vegetarian.
Confucius (another guy who never bothered writing a thing down, like Plato, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed) is credited with our Chinese model of propriety
Sleep as a bow
sit as a bell
stand as a pine
run as the wind.
It’s (very) slightly cooler in Chinese, as it rhymes:
sui yu gung
jaw yu jung
lop yu chung
juw yu fung
I believe the upshot is “do the right thing the right way.”
A righteous being doesn’t sleep like a corpse, one observes decorum even in rest. Erect posture and proper bearing seems to suffuse our Taoist, Confucian and Buddhist traditions, and I suppose one could do worse.
When running is warranted, be the best dang runner you can possibly be or why bother?
Does this make any sense?
Best
g
June 16th, 2006 at 6:46 am
Great comment, Gerry, and making perfect sense: when it’s time to be a runner, run 100%. That is the real point of Zen in practice.
June 16th, 2006 at 8:16 am
Brother Algernon, you are much too kind.
You’re the master, and I am but the learner.
I read with earnest trepidation and rapt fascination your account of that other application of Zen in everyday life, and urge you to publish it on your consistently excellent blog as a companion to this one.
June 18th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
Sir Algernon,
I have the opposite problem. I have 42 known destinations and I consistently miss the proverbial bus as someone adds location 43 and 44 to my to do list. Thus, I find myself running nonstop in hopes to speedily get to items 1, 2, and take a shortcut to 14 in order to meet that bus and back track to 8 (hoping to make up 3-7 at a later time). If I make the bus, I’ll not have to run to all 42 destinations with such unseasoned feet…and I assure you, such an act is, as a matter of certainty, impossible, yet I run my hardest and manage to accomplish this task daily.
Should I find the bus along the way, it has no driver. Or, in the alternative, the driver is crazy, naked, and running up and down the aisleway screaming that he can’t find his poppycock.
As of late, I’ve given up my reliance or expectation of the bus, try to map out a reasonable course as I start to run, and refuse to think about it at the end of my 15 hour work day. If my mind doesn’t cooperate, I don’t sleep and I try to get a jump on the pending running.
So, what’s the calming and soothing solution to knowing the destinations while also knowing that that bus does not suffice?