Personal Perspective No. 3
“It is not only our dreams we should place in God’s hands; it is our peace”.
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Jeanne Marie
Comments on the Parable “Is that So?”
Parables are wonderful ways to communicate. Well-written parables can touch nearly everyone in some way, and sometimes they can touch many people on several levels at once. Well-written parables reach deep into our souls and touch the truth. If we let them, they can tear down walls built over many years from many fears and attachments.
The parable “Is That So?” demolished such a wall for me. I will repeat the parable here.
The Zen Master Hakuin was praised by his neighbors as one living a pure life.
A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store, lived near him. Suddenly without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child.
This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.
In great anger the parents went to the master. “Ah so” was all he would say.
After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the little one needed.
A year later the girl-mother could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth—that the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fishmarket.
The mother and the father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask his forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back again.
Hakuin was willing. In yielding the child, all he said was: “Ah so.”
I used to experience anger and frustration over perceived injustices (and I still do at times—change is not always easy). Things that I saw as unfair riled my “rebel-self” and stirred my emotions into action with undaunted determination to “fix” the inequity.
I do not believe that it is morally wrong to be outraged by injustice; however, I believe I was spiritually unaware or naïve about my options. The parable “Is That So?” showed me a much more loving, peaceful, spiritually-sound option to injustice: nonattachment.
Nonattachment is not the same as detachment. Let me repeat that: Nonattachment is not the same as detachment. In fact, spiritually, I would consider them complete opposites.
Detachment means deliberate separation, a desire to be apart from rather than a part of.
Nonattachment means: love without demands; dedication without desire; caring without constraints; involvement without expectations. In other words, it means a positive interaction without strings that tie the relationship into knots.
Nonattachment teaches how to care and not care at the same time. It means caring about the process but not the results. It means caring deeply about the now and not the “not-now.” It means living without fear, living joyfully with what life brings without concern about the consequences.
In the parable “Is That So?,” the Zen Buddhist master beautifully demonstrates nonattachment. He exemplifies nonattachment to his reputation; to the need for truth; to the need for justice; and most importantly, his nonattachment to the child, which is the essence of the lesson I learned.
My first reaction to this parable was outrage. The injustice of it all! His reputation is lost. People choose to believe a pregnant young girl over the years of evidence of his “pure life.” He is given the responsibility of raising a child whom he did not father, and then . . . and then . . . and then he is expected to just give the baby back regardless of his “attachment” to the child. No! No! No! Shortly before I read this parable for the first time, I was studying the Workbook in A Course in Miracles. I came upon lesson 23, “I can escape from the world I see by giving up attack thoughts.” To study this lesson and make it relevant to me personally, I made a list of the things I tended to attack at the time, and “injustice” topped the list.
(The rest of the list included at the time: stupidity, abuse, competition, resistance, self, and selfishness, in that order. I have since learned to relinquish my attacks on all but stupidity. I have no trouble with ignorance—lack of knowledge, but I still struggle with frustrations over stupidity, but I’m working on it!)
The lesson was teaching me that I should relinquish attack, but it did not teach me how. That’s what reading “Is That So?” did; it showed me what nonattack looks like through the eyes of nonattachment.
Hakuin did not attack or fight the grandparents of the child when they came to him; he knew his words would mean nothing to the enraged grandparents who believed their daughter was telling the truth.
He accepted without regret, resistance, or retaliation the circumstances the turbulent stream of life washed upon his shore. His nonattachment to the “meaning-less” slings and arrows of life, as he saw them to be, allowed him to move on in peace and joy to the “meaning-full” mission now facing him—caring for the child.
The part of the story in which I became most enraged was when the grandparents figured that their apology would be enough to heal the wounds of a damaged reputation. And then . . . and then . . . and then . . . expect that it was perfectly okay to just take the child away without regard to Hakuin’s probable “attachment” to the child and the child’s attachment to Hakuin. I fumed over this story for days until . . . I realized that my outrage would not be at all constructive.
Had I been in Hakuin’s place, my rage would have caused me to attack, which would have only exacerbated the problems. It would have created resentment, separation, fear, frustration, and unloving acts of retaliation.
I also realized that Hakuin could accept the request for forgiveness without difficulty since he had not judged or condemned them; without condemnation, forgiveness is not necessary. Let me repeat that. Without condemnation, forgiveness is not necessary.
Through nonattachment, there was no need to attack. The injustices were irrelevant. Hakuin was impervious to the worldly consequences and lived in the moment of spiritual truth. A baby was in need of care and unconditional love, and so he joyfully provided those comforts to the child who had been unexpectedly laid at his feet.
Then he peacefully participated in the reunion of the child and its family. He never made any element of the circumstance about himself; he had come to know that nothing outside of himself could disturb his inner peace. “Ah so” embodies the peace that passeth all understanding.
I admired and respected the master’s ability to accept the circumstance without a ripple of dread. He demonstrated the beauty of nonattachment and its natural extension, nonattack.
Nonattachment is a pathway to peace. Nonattachment to the concerns of the physical world is the truth and the life and the way of the Christ consciousness within each of us, we need only seek to bring it to the surface of our own stream of consciousness.
I have cherished this parable ever since for the life-changing message it gave to me.