enlightened or not, so I could do whatever I wanted. Much relieved, I crawled into bed, a kung fu master at last.
My father woke me up at six-thirty; even dead men have to go to school in our achievement-oriented society. I atesome cereal and let him drive me that morning, reasoning that I no longer had to walk barefoot or do anything unpleasant now that I was enlightened. Within an hour my new spiritual status was in trouble, however. I had a crush on a girl in my biology class, so naturally I figured that this would be a good time to ask her out, seeing that I was living in the eternal Now and had nothing to lose. But when the opportunity came to approach her, I froze as usual and she walked right past me, unaware of my inner turmoil. How could I be enlightened and still be nervous about asking someone for a date? I wondered. My temporary solution was to decide that part of being enlightened meant ceasing to make distinctions between behavior that you formerly called “good” or “bad,” and accepting that whatever you did was an expression of your inner nature, or your “Original Face before you were born” as the Zen manuals called it. Being insecure was just the way the cosmos decided to manifest itself when I was born.
For two days I dwelt in this state of philosophical limbo, where I still wanted to believe I was enlightened but had to constantly talk myself into ignoring evidence to the contrary. My epiphany came to an end on the third day, when I went back to the Chinese Boxing Institute and got called into the Circle of Fighting. At the sound of my name my knees went weak as usual, I got beat up by my opponent as usual, and then got yelled at by Sensei O’Keefe afterward for being a candy-ass, also as usual. This couldn’t be enlightenment, I finally admitted to myself, because none of the Asian philosophy books I had read said anything about enlightenment’s being just as miserable as ignorance.
4
J ust before entering the ninth grade at school, I persuaded my parents to let me give up my cello lessons. I’d started playing the cello when I was seven, after having already tried the violin and piano without much success. It was hardly surprising that I had shown an early interest in music, since my mother was both a concert pianist and a concert oboist who practiced a minimum of four hours a day, and who gave lessons every afternoon in our living room. She was the first person to major in two instruments at the Eastman School of Music, and was one of the founders of our town orchestra. She loved music, but what really made an impression on me was that she loved practice. Performing was fine, but practice was what it was all about for her, and being able to do it for hours every day meant she was happy for hours a day.
That really burned my dad up. “Don’t you ever get tired of playing the same passage over and over and over?” he would ask.
“Of course not! It’s different every time! Besides, you know the answer yourself. Don’t you love working on your paintings?”
“I like
having painted
, Martha.
Painting
is one big pain in the ass.”
“Really? What a shame! I think that’s the best part—the struggle!”
My mother was also fond of saying that the neck, back and giblets were the best part of the chicken. She sure was easy to please.
Unfortunately, I took after my father more than my mother when it came to work habits. I hated practice. It was a joyless exercise, made bearable only by the implied promise that if I kept at it, I would eventually become “good” and then people would finally have to take me seriously. I started violin when I was four, and showed some promise. When I was five the music teacher at our school invited me to join the orchestra. When I walked into the music room for my first rehearsal, however, it so happened that the teacher had just stepped out of the room for a moment. That was all the older kids needed to reduce me to tears with their
My father woke me up at six-thirty; even dead men have to go to school in our achievement-oriented society. I atesome cereal and let him drive me that morning, reasoning that I no longer had to walk barefoot or do anything unpleasant now that I was enlightened. Within an hour my new spiritual status was in trouble, however. I had a crush on a girl in my biology class, so naturally I figured that this would be a good time to ask her out, seeing that I was living in the eternal Now and had nothing to lose. But when the opportunity came to approach her, I froze as usual and she walked right past me, unaware of my inner turmoil. How could I be enlightened and still be nervous about asking someone for a date? I wondered. My temporary solution was to decide that part of being enlightened meant ceasing to make distinctions between behavior that you formerly called “good” or “bad,” and accepting that whatever you did was an expression of your inner nature, or your “Original Face before you were born” as the Zen manuals called it. Being insecure was just the way the cosmos decided to manifest itself when I was born.
For two days I dwelt in this state of philosophical limbo, where I still wanted to believe I was enlightened but had to constantly talk myself into ignoring evidence to the contrary. My epiphany came to an end on the third day, when I went back to the Chinese Boxing Institute and got called into the Circle of Fighting. At the sound of my name my knees went weak as usual, I got beat up by my opponent as usual, and then got yelled at by Sensei O’Keefe afterward for being a candy-ass, also as usual. This couldn’t be enlightenment, I finally admitted to myself, because none of the Asian philosophy books I had read said anything about enlightenment’s being just as miserable as ignorance.
4
J ust before entering the ninth grade at school, I persuaded my parents to let me give up my cello lessons. I’d started playing the cello when I was seven, after having already tried the violin and piano without much success. It was hardly surprising that I had shown an early interest in music, since my mother was both a concert pianist and a concert oboist who practiced a minimum of four hours a day, and who gave lessons every afternoon in our living room. She was the first person to major in two instruments at the Eastman School of Music, and was one of the founders of our town orchestra. She loved music, but what really made an impression on me was that she loved practice. Performing was fine, but practice was what it was all about for her, and being able to do it for hours every day meant she was happy for hours a day.
That really burned my dad up. “Don’t you ever get tired of playing the same passage over and over and over?” he would ask.
“Of course not! It’s different every time! Besides, you know the answer yourself. Don’t you love working on your paintings?”
“I like
having painted
, Martha.
Painting
is one big pain in the ass.”
“Really? What a shame! I think that’s the best part—the struggle!”
My mother was also fond of saying that the neck, back and giblets were the best part of the chicken. She sure was easy to please.
Unfortunately, I took after my father more than my mother when it came to work habits. I hated practice. It was a joyless exercise, made bearable only by the implied promise that if I kept at it, I would eventually become “good” and then people would finally have to take me seriously. I started violin when I was four, and showed some promise. When I was five the music teacher at our school invited me to join the orchestra. When I walked into the music room for my first rehearsal, however, it so happened that the teacher had just stepped out of the room for a moment. That was all the older kids needed to reduce me to tears with their
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