beauty at an exhibition

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Like a janitor in some high-rise building, I carry a ring of jingling keys, a ring fat with sassy memories and keys for every lock. Why the doors should require keys is beyond me: I am the janitor and I have the keys ... and they jingle. And one such jingling key is this ....

Once, when I was in the throes of 'serious' Zen practice, I went to an Buddhist-themed exhibition in New York. The show was hosted by the Japan Society, an immaculate building filled with immaculate treasures ... calligraphy, art works, and statues little and large, made of wood or brass or bronze, the invocations of a willing heart.

Even if I had not been interested in the practices of Buddhism, still I would have been drawn to the art before me. It was delicate and astounding all at once -- the kind of art that demanded attention to the emptiness that gave form to form.

I was a sucker for beauty before I was ever a sucker for Zen practice and so the visit to the exhibition was a kind of double whammy in my janitorial life: It was stuff that knocked me out in a realm that knocked me out. Not all of it struck me with equal force ... some of the stuff I passed by as I might pass by a plate of cold mashed potatoes. But where I lingered and was consumed, it was music in my heart ... big and compelling and sweeping the janitor off his feet. It was yummy-yummier-yummiest and I purely loved to be yummied.

There were hundreds of pieces in the exhibit. Case after well-lighted case displayed the stuff of Buddhism. Some of the descriptions planted neatly by the particular works said "national treasure," as if one thing or another could be elevated by some human cheering section. Then, as now, I was mildly (and sometimes savagely) offended by these descriptive encomiums for what, in my mind, was simply beautiful. After a while, I stopped reading these simpering, self-serving bits of history.

As I strolled along, past one case and the next, the ecstasies that welled up were almost too much. I really was a pig in shit. One after another after another bit of beauty until it was like staring at the sun ... I simply could not fit any more yummy into my yummy machine. It was like filling some very important gas tank and then, when the tank was full, forgetting to pull out the gushing nozzle and ... somehow this precious stuff splattered at my feet. It was all too...too...too too.

Finely-wrought Buddhas and bodhisattvas, paintings as powerful as they were delicate and simple, calligraphy of the Heart Sutra ... it was wowsers and I was wowed.

But at just about the moment when I thought I simply could not take any more, when my gas tank of beauty was full and overflowing ... at just about that moment, I came around a corner and there, sitting in another case whose glass was spotlessly clean, there rested a statue that left everything else in the shade. It wasn't especially beautiful, but ....

It looked like a stick of split fire wood -- maybe 20 inches high with an irregular width of perhaps four or five inches. It was black or blackened. It stood on end. Carved crudely into this fire wood -- the kind of fire wood that might have been stacked outside some farmer's house -- was a Buddha or bodhisattva of some sort. Its imperfections were as rife as the perfections of the other statues in the exhibit were evident. Chisel or knife marks were apparent. Bits of lopsidedness and disproportion were apparent. This, in my mind, was done by a man who did not care about beauty or national treasures. He wanted a statue to evidence his straightforward faith or longing or humanity... and he made it, all by himself, without regard to success or failure. It made me want to cry, not because of its perfect imperfections but because of its honest humanity standing naked and unabashed.

It blew me away. I could not utter the word "beauty."

And since I knew I had seen what I had longed to see, I left the exhibit hall with many art works still unseen.

But the memory jingles on my key chain still and reminds me of the old shepherd's prayer beloved by the Bal Shem Tov:

"Dear Lord, though I keep the sheep of others for pay, for you I would keep them for free because I love you."
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