Why Bodhidharma Faced the Wall

What if Turkey Sex Arises?

I know it must seem strange to people that, when I meditate in my Asheville cabin, I look out the French doors at the back of my study.  Soto Zen practitioners are supposed to stare at a wall.  But in this smallish cabin (900 square feet), there isn’t any unoccupied wall space.  I could lower the curtains on the French doors.  But it seems a shame to do that, when all I’m looking out on is a meadow and some trees, and I take my glasses off anyway, so it’s all a blur.  In the morning it’s dark when I begin, around 6:00, and the world lightens up, and the birds begin to sing.  I love watching and hearing the world wake up.

I have had a few distractions.

One morning a bear was out in the yard beside the back deck, and just as I thought, Oh, there’s a bear, another one actually walked across the deck and stepped down.  I had the French doors open that day, so there was just a screen between me and the bear, who was maybe four feet away.

Another morning I saw what I’m pretty sure was a bobcat.  He’d been sighted the day before on the mountain across from us, and I believe he was sitting outside in the meadow.  He stared at me through the screen and I stared at him, actually put on my glasses that time.  Seeing a bobcat is a rare thing.

If someone says I’m not practicing Soto Zen because I’m not facing a wall, I’m sure that’s right.  I’m practicing something else.  God knows what.  When I was researching Ruth Fuller Sasaki for an article, I read that her husband, Sokei-an Sasaki, used to meditate on a rock in the middle of a stream.  Sat there all night sometimes.  Nyogen Senzaki sat zazen on park benches in San Francisco.  They weren’t Soto, of course.

But if they can sit in unconventional settings, I can look out the French doors.

At the noon sitting, when my autistic brother-in-law Louis sits with me, it’s brighter back there.  He and I begin by talking, then I read to him from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, which was a big influence on me and which I thought he would like.  I think of it as down to earth, though as I read it to Louis, it sometimes sounds abstract and difficult.  He often finds something interesting to comment on, though, and relates it to his life.  My wife tells me no one has ever talked to him this way.  He’ll turn 68 next month.

We have a flock of wild turkeys that hangs around our place, wanders all over the meadow, and one day last week they were out back, making noise and walking around, one rather copiously pooping.  That was a mild distraction.  But this past Saturday—in a romantic moment which I’ve seen once before—one of the females assumed a passive position in the grass, as if sitting on eggs, and the male turkey approached her to consummate their relationship.

This particular male has been around for weeks.  I’ve gotten used to turkeys up here, but this one is quite a character.  He’s constantly posing, unfurling the feathers in back and walking around in his full glory.  It somehow resembles a body builder’s most muscular pose.  And it seems a real muscular effort.  Sometimes, as he walks in this way, he makes strange noises, including what seems to be a quiet thumping sound, as if on a drum.  I know it must sound as if I’ve been in self-isolation for too long, but my wife confirms she has also heard this sound.  One evening, in fact, while she was sitting out front, he kept getting closer and closer to her, posing this way and thumping away.  He also does his best gobbling sounds early in the morning, outside our bedroom window, when she’s trying to sleep.  It’s hard not to think he knows what he’s doing.  He’s purposely being annoying, and demonstrating his magnificence.

I hate to borrow the words of another writer—though the writer I’m borrowing from is pretty good—but if I’ve ever seen a creature who “struts and frets his hour upon the stage,” it’s this one.  He reminds me of the man some people call Agent Orange (though I, in a somewhat more obscure reference, think of him as Donny Two Scoops).  All show and no action.

Except on Saturday the turkey seemed ready to take action.  He was making his move.

My wife, who stays in the other part of the house while we’re meditating, but has French doors over there too, said, “Uh oh.  We’re having some turkey activity out there.”  Louis and I had just started to sit.  I actually turned the phone timer off for a moment, and said, “Maybe we should wait a few minutes,” when the other male turkey, much less of a preener, showed up and shoved the showy male away.  He did that with a kind of chest bump.  It was like watching two Sumo wrestlers.  Or as Louis said, like the WWF (another place where Donny Two Scoops has appeared).

What the hell, I said to Louis.  You never know what’s going to show up when you sit.  Let’s just do it.  He agreed.  I took off my glasses and we began.

I can’t see much without my glasses.  As I get older, and get concentrated, my eyes often close as I sit.  (Another reason I’m not practicing Soto Zen!  I’m so ashamed!)  But turkeys seem to have an elaborate mating ritual, which involves a series of collisions between two males (does anyone remember The Bump?) and then, sooner or later, the better bumper gets his reward.  On this occasion, from what I can tell, that didn’t happen.  The two males jousted for a while, one went off with the rest of the flock, and the male and female were left behind.  But I don’t believe they did it.  Maybe he’d shot his wad, so to speak, in the fight.  He wasn’t in the mood anymore.

I assume that’s why we don’t have any baby chicks running around this spring (though there’s still hope).  This guy would rather just pose.  He’s doing it right now, as I proofread this.

In any case, Louis and I sat with it.  Kept coming back to the breathing.  Louis said he didn’t nod off at all.