One day a student of zen told her teacher that she was having a hard time meditating. Worse still, having studied for several years, she was feeling like she’d made no progress whatsoever. “I am discouraged,” she said. “Can you tell me what I should do to overcome this?” The zen master smiled and said, “encourage others.”
_________________________________
Some Thoughts:
This is a story I think about on a weekly basis. Which is, perhaps, a confession of how frequently i feel discouraged. But this word was turned on its end when I came across an interview with Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano who said:
...I do not have a bad opinion of doubt. I think doubt has been a factor in the movement of history. I have grown to appreciate doubt more and more and, at the same time, to distrust those compañeros who only offer certainty. They seem too much like the wooden men which the Popul Vuh in Mayan mythology describes as one of the mistakes the gods made when they attempted to create man and didn't know how to construct him and finally they made him out of corn and he came out alright. But one of those attempts consisted of creating him out of wood.
The wooden man was just like a man except that no blood ran through his veins; he had no spirit or courage and didn't speak a word. I believe he had nothing to say because he had no courage and therefore was never discouraged. The proof that one has courage lies in the fact that one can be discouraged. And the proof that one can arrive at certainties that are truly capable of transforming reality lies in the ability to entertain fertile doubts before arriving at certainty; doubts that buzz around in one's head, one's conscience, one's heart, in the imagination, like tenacious flies. We need neither fear doubt nor discouragement: they are proof that our endeavors are human. And we are fortunate that these endeavors are human. Otherwise, these would be the endeavors of false men, men of wood, that is to say bureaucrats, dogmatic men, people who choose models over reality. Discouragement and doubt indicate that one sees reality as it really is.
(In Eduardo Galeano: Interviewed. NACLA: Report on the Americas, 20:5, Sept.-Dec. 1986, pp. 14-19.)
Galeano’s work has inspired me since I first came across Open Veins of Latin America when I was 18. His journalism lead him to value the little stories that carry wisdom across generations and cultures. He taught me to see stories differently or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that he taught me simply to pay attention which, in this age of hyper-distraction, is a radical thing, indeed.
As with so many seemingly simple zen tales, there is an onion's worth of layers to this tale that I share today. When i stop to notice the world around me, i see encouragement everywhere. And i feel this is a necessary medicine in these dire times. I am reminded of the Talmudic wisdom of "Every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it whispering, 'grow, grow.'" Such abundance.