The Art of Zen
“To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub! For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” Hamlet
I found myself in church at a funeral mass recently and the priest said that the point of life was to find peace within one’s life and that the deceased had done so and it occurred to me that that’s what everybody is doing in their own way and one of the ways of doing that is by feeling like one is part of something that is bigger than oneself. I think everyone feels a certain sense of peace through shared experiences, whether it’s the daily mass goer that occasionally lights candles in the church or the Coldplay fan that goes to Glastonbury and is one of tens of thousands holding up a glowy light that looks great on the television to those at home watching the spectacle.
I’ve found myself recently with the inclination to attend mass on the occasional Sunday as the mood takes me. It’s a nice reason to have a shave, lash on some smelly fragrance, and make oneself dress a bit more presentably. Things have changed a little bit since I last went to mass though, although it’s never been something I have done regularly.
At the part of the mass where people offer each other the “sign of peace” by shaking hands, they now seem to turn to each other and give a little wave which I found a bit weird but I guess it’s a little bit more hygienic than hand shaking. I got this updated formality totally wrong and when the chap in front of me turned to give me “the sign of peace” I thrust out my hand and he hesitated for a second and then laughed and shook it the old-fashioned way. Another thing that has changed is that instead of passing around a basket in which to put coins, one now puts their offerings in a box on the way in or out of the church and I find myself wondering if before long perhaps the way of giving offerings might involve tapping with one’s card or phone. It’s a wonder such a thing isn’t in place already.
I’m not sure what exactly has prompted my desire to attend mass of late but it may be partly on account of the fact that the world seems to be changing very rapidly and I have a mild nostalgia for things as they used to be. Every other week there seems to be some new thing to be terrified of or outraged about and so I thought that maybe going to mass on occasion might inject a little positivity and optimism into my week.
The church doesn’t seem to be as full as it would have been thirty years ago on a Sunday, but it does seem there are more attendees than the last time I went to mass a few years previously, which is interesting; perhaps there are increasing amounts of people, like me, that feel a desire to have something familiar to cling to.
At the weekend, I didn’t manage to get to mass but I had a kind of spiritual experience anyway, as I often do when observing nature. I drove around four hours across the country so as to go out with my camera club (Solas Photography Galway) and take pictures of colonies of puffins and gannets on the Saltee Islands off of the coast of Wexford. Puffins are an endangered species and I had never before seen one in my life. I had never seen a gannet either.
After a twenty-minute trip on a small ferry, one has to disembark onto a rib, 6 people at a time, and to get off of the rib one has to get one’s feet a bit wet. There’s nothing much on the island apart from seabirds. There are no shops, no toilets, and only one house that I think belongs to the owner of the island and I’m not sure he’s there all that regularly or at all. At one end there is a colony of puffins while at the other there is a colony of gannets. Having only ever seen pictures of puffins, I’m a little surprised at how small they are. They’re not much taller than the length of my hand. Even more surprising is that they seem totally at ease with people. They land and takeoff within inches of where you might sit and they seem completely unperturbed to the point where I felt like I could simply pick one up and put it in my pocket and bring it home.
After about an hour looking at and photographing the puffins, I trek to the other side of the island to have a look at the gannet colony. There are literally thousands of them and they all seem to be making a very grating sound that I can only describe as somewhere between a spinning rachet noise maker and a duck. They are perched on peaks which sort of look like snow-capped mountains, but it is not snow, it is gannet poop.
After a while, the noise of the gannets seems to me to resemble that of an incessantly nagging spouse and I decide I enjoyed the Zen-like company of the puffins a lot more, and so I trek back towards them. Comparative to much wildlife generally, the colourfully beaked puffins almost seem like the wildlife equivalent of Buddhist monks and I wonder if this might be part of the reason why they are on the endangered species list. Completely unperturbed by people, they occasionally fly off and return with beaks loaded up with freshly caught herrings and also pop in and out of some of the many rabbit burrows which the island is littered with.
There is no mobile reception on much of the island and so I spend the whole day without looking at my phone, and my head feels much quieter as a result. When it comes time to leave the island, I ask some of the others if they are going to the pub and they say they are. I want to go too but, with wet feet and feeling a little shivery, I opt to head back to my B&B instead and I’m flat out asleep in no time. I wake up in the morning and still feel sleepy, and so drive home and sleep half of the day. And even though I sleep half of the day I still manage to sleep solidly at night till around 5am. I must have slept 18 out of 30 hours, which is more continuous sleep than I have had in months. But even though I’ve slept loads I still feel pretty sleepy and my body feels stiff from all the driving to and from the islands.
In theory, I should be well rested and so capable of doing a decent long run with the local club, Galway City Harriers, but I feel heavy and stiff. I decide to run the 4 miles to the start of the run (which is 11 miles on top of that) and after a roughly 3-mile jog, my hips/ass area feels kind of stiff and sore and I turn around to head for home. But then I wonder if maybe I have just seized up a bit from all the driving and opt to try some lunges. I do ten and then the hip discomfort miraculously resolves, and so I carry on and meet-up with the rest of the group. I never really stretch all that much generally, but I often sleep on the floor; I also sit on the floor in various postures when watching TV. I verily believe that the only reason people even feel the need to stretch at all is because they need to counteract the tightening caused by the “comforts” of sitting in chairs at computers, driving cars, and sleeping in soft beds.
I often enjoy chattering away with other runners when I go out with the group; it makes the miles appear go by faster. But today I don’t feel much inclination to talk to anyone at all and after the first few miles I get into a good rhythm and take off like a train, running, according to my Garmin, the fastest 5km I have run in 10 years, shaving 17 seconds off of the last time I did so in April (as I mentioned here: The Art of Running) which is interesting as, aside from being older, I am approximately 13kgs heavier than I was 10 years ago. I guess that having a relaxing couple of days imbued me with increased strength and stamina. The priest at mass said the purpose of life is to find peace within oneself, and I’m not sure if that’s something one can obtain perpetually, but it’s apparent that any snatches of it that one can find, however and wherever one finds it, infuses one with renewed vitality; perhaps such is the art of Zen.