Polishing a Tile

Polishing a tile -- what does that mean? I first ran across this koan in the book Zen Comics by Ioanna Salajan. At that time I was rather young and thought I was very clever for understanding its meaning. Little did I know that time and a lot of emotional bumps and bruises during the coming years would make me understand that I didn't get it at all. That the layers of a this koan, as with all truths, can be endless.It all depends on your determination to get there and your willingness to let it reach you in its time.

To sate your curiosity, the koan goes like this:


Master: Well, dear pupil, and what is the objective of sitting in meditation?

Pupil: The objective, dear Master, is to become a Buddha.

Master pries up a tile and starts scrubbing it with sand.

Pupil: Master, what are you doing?

Master: I'm polishing this for a mirror.

Pupil: How can polishing a tile make a mirror?

Master: How can sitting in meditation make a Buddha?


Simple right? One thing is not the same as another. Meditation is not being the Buddha. Yay me, I got it! Or did I? What is meditation? What is a Buddha, and why do I want to be one? Meditation is just a quieting of the mind, closing out intrusive thoughts, focusing. A quiet mind is something we can all achieve, with practice, if we sit quietly in a room and remove all distraction. But how long can you keep that up?  Ten minutes, an hour, two hours? At some point you have to get up and participate in life. You have to placate your yelling boss, or calm your crying baby, or determine how to pay a bill when your bank account is dry. That's where the Buddha part comes in -- doing all that while maintaining a quiet mind. Life doesn't stop or get suddenly easier just because you become enlightened. Enlightenment comes when you can deal with life from a perpetually centered position. How in the heck do you do that? You actively decide to do so. You keep trying. You experience the drama, but try to walk through it calm of thought, not letting emotion take hold. Emotion will take hold, but you recognize it and let it go. Over and over and over again. 

As a middle-aged human being who readily admits they are still trudging along the path far from Enlightenment, I'm sure this explanation is far from complete, but it still has some shining jewels to live by: don't mistake the means for the end; don't compartmentalize your head and your heart but rather find the synchronicity between them; don't live the now as though it is the then and the could be.

Signing off till another day.