Bucket Moments

I just can't seem to get ahead at the job I wasn't meant to do in the first place. I am a biologist by trade. Which means I suppose I am a scholar by trade as there are so many different things biologists do. I'm in that classic situation where everyone keeps asking me what I want to do with my degree. I really enjoyed getting my degree but when it comes to work...I have no idea! If I watch Days of Thunder I want to be a race car driver for a week. If I watch Apollo 13 I sit in fridge boxes with an aluminum foil hat pretending I am flying to the moon. Careers are not meant for people with the attention span of a gnat and the conviction of a beige sweater. So for now collection agent Melany it is.

So I have been thinking about what it is to live in the first place. I mean, our jobs take up a good portion of our lives right? So I should do something I like. I have read endless philosophy books and I think Buddhism is helpful to me right now. I once read the writings of the Zen master Chiyono in this book Zen Flesh Zen Bones I picked up on a trip. Basically its about this Buddhist nun that for the life of her couldn't find enlightenment.. She just couldn’t get her head around it. All her nun friends were all over enlightenment like white on rice and, as the years went by, it seemed she would never acheive it. She studied and meditated endlessly and, finally, now in her old age, she had consigned herself to the realization she had wasted her life.  One day, during her daily chores the bottom fell from her lacquer bucket, spilling the water everywhere. In this manner she became enlightened.

When I read that story I got pretty worked up initially. I was feeling pretty slow for not getting how the failure of her receptacle resulted in reaching another spiritual plane. I spent years whenever a broom would break or a spatula give out while I was cooking waiting eagerly for the warm glow of Buddhist nothingness to wash over me. All I ended up with was a bunch of broken utensils and tools. One day I was sitting at work, seething about the economy and my lot of doing something so opposite what I had intended to do with my life. Clients were yelling at me. My cubicle seemed to be shrinking. I was really worried I was going to snap. In that moment I understood what the bucket had to do with enlightenment. It was the hair that broke the camels back.  It was about giving up. It was about pushing yourself so far that you have no ego. Humiliating yourself so much and repressing your desires so long you cease to be human. No self respect. No self. And when you have that one moment…that moment when you totally snap…there is a little known door 2 you can choose. Rather than going ape shit you can actually become totally quiet and empty. I had that moment today. And I can always thank the corporate world for that.