Love Locks

The picture on this blog was taken during my Walk-About of London in 2014. It captures a small portion of the Millennium Bridge where a cluster of Love Locks hung attached to the girder lines. At the time there were only a few locks, but I imagine there are many, many more now. Each lock  included at least one name and a date, commemorating something for the individual who placed it there. Some had additional words, an explanation of purpose, but I refrained from reading them -- somehow it felt intrusive even though the locks were displayed openly for all to see.

I walked the length of the bridge slowly, having just climbed from the trench through the city that is the Thames. It was the time of month when the full moon pulled the tides out to sea, so the banks of the Thames were exposed during the day. Seeing the locks reminded me of all the tokens that had been thrown into the water over the millennia -- coins, buttons, and other small objects inscribed with names and dates. Things the mudlarks collected in their daily combing of the reeking mud which beckoned with its promise of treasures both ancient and mundane.

Times change but people's instinct to memorialize their existence does not. Though the locks are more visible, apropos in the era of social networking, their mystery is just as palpable as those bobbles washing upon the floor of an ancient river.

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.