Read an excerpt…
Without seeking it, profound spiritual growth can arise in the most unexpected places—from a child’s reaction, a stranger who enters our lives, or even our neighbor; thus, the Zen master next door.
Zen stories and philosophies transcend all spiritual belief systems. Our belief systems are quite similar; however, some individuals don’t always recognize this. I’m not sure why. However, because of these similarities, connections, and integration of philosophies we share, I decided to write about them. I wrote short stories called parables for enlightened everyday living. Each story focusing on seventeen significant philosophies that capture Zen in our everyday lives and are present in most belief systems. You may see yourself or someone you know in these parables. I hope so.
During the publishing process, Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New World and many other books, said:
“What an inspiring way to learn about our very soul, The modern parables in Zen Master Next Door are captivating and left me wanting more.”
I can’t review my own book so I will leave that up to others, but I certainly enjoyed writing it. Here’s one Zen story from Zen Master Next Door (3rd and latest edition).
Enjoy!
EDDIE ZEN
The energy of the mind is the essence of life.
Aristotle
Listen to the voice of nature, for it holds treasures for you.
Huron—Native American
When knowledge becomes tattered, wisdom springs.
Eddie Zen
Start with the truth. At least that is what he told Judd, his neighbor of nearly a decade.
“Answers to questions most important to humanity always lie within us. Come on, certainly you’ve heard that before,” Eddie said with a frothy tone. He started conversations this way, bypassing any normal greeting.
On a warm breeze that filtered through the trees in Eddie’s front yard, arrived the rich fragrance of juniper from Judd’s garden next door. Eddie’s yard, now speckled with boxes, chairs, tables and bookcases, was once a pristine postage stamp-sized lot but now resembled a yard sale without the swarms of bargain hunters.
Judd dropped by on a lark, not knowing that his elderly neighbor was moving that very day. But that was common practice for both men. Judd was unaware of much around him, while Eddie was unpredictable at best.
Replying to the older man, Judd nodded his head. “What’s going on here? Where are you going?”
“I’m moving on…just moving on. But don’t worry about that, because I’m trying to give you something to think about. Think about it, the answers you search for come from wisdom that’s passed down through the ages. I repeat, in case you aren’t catching on, it’s about wisdom—w-i-s-d-o-m.”
Giving in as he usually did, Judd said, “All right already— so where does it come from? This wisdom.”
“Good question,” Eddie said, drawing in a slow breath while scratching his day old stubble. “It started with our first ancestors and flowed
on year after year, decade after decade and century after…well you get my point,” he said squinting as he looked to the gray, hazy sky, thick with summer’s humidity. “Anyway, although this wisdom has been fermented like a good chardonnay many times over for many years, it is now tucked away. Seldom does modern man give it much weight.”
Eddie sat down on a dusty, wooded trunk and yanked off his horn-rimmed glasses. He held them up, and he peered through the lenses, and put them back on. Taking a long, deliberate breath, he continued. “Today we rely more on science at one end of the spectrum or blind faith at the other. Wisdom is overlooked and seldom part of our decision-making. Don’t you think?” Judd obliged nodding his head.
As the movers in the house packed Eddie’s belongings, it dawned on Judd that he was always drawn to Eddie’s musings and now seeing him leave the neighborhood, an instant sense of emptiness plopped in his abdomen. With downcast eyes, Judd told him that he wished he had taken the time to get to know him—really know him.
Eddie was a rather imposing but gentle man. Standing a hair over six feet tall, he was slender and looked like a man ten years his junior. He always donned frayed oxford shirts that draped on his torso like bed linens on a grandmother’s clothesline. His silver hair was thick for a man of any age, impeccably combed and parted to the side with the straightest of parts.
With an easy smile and radiant disposition, Eddie unwittingly drew Judd to him and always did. Despite his incessant ramblings, Judd knew Eddie was a singular sort. A ready smile punctuated Eddie’s discourse.
“Ah, you know me well enough. Don’t worry about that. Get to know yourself! Get to know others and learn from them. Get to know the guy next door. This is what I’m talking about,” he told Judd, springing from his seat and walking to a lopsided pyramid of boxes.
He began fumbling through a crumbling, corrugated container. For a moment, Eddie said nothing. He looked perplexed as he shuffled papers in the container. Losing his concentration from moment to moment, he paused as he examined an ancient fountain pen and a softball-sized sphere of rubber bands.
“Are you looking for something?” Judd asked.
“Yes. Why, what does it look like I’m doing?” he said with a sigh. “It’s in here somewhere. I want to give you something I started and I insist you finish it. What I’m looking for will show you what I mean.”
Eddie continued to rummage through boxes. As he did, dust emanated from each box flap, filling the immediate area with a ripe tang.
Eddie stopped for a moment, looking up without his signature gleam and paused. “You’ve always been kind to me and listened as I’ve spouted off at the first moment you’ve gotten home from work. You have been kind enough to speak with me while you’re out in the yard. Even at last year’s Fourth of July block party, I pulled you away from the beer cooler to throw you a thought, and you were there with a catcher’s mitt to snare it. Whatever I threw out there, you were willing to give it the kind of attention I was looking for.” He smiled and nodded as if proud of a son.
Judd, always neatly dressed and clean-shaven, was in his late thirties, had a muscular physique and short-cropped blonde curls with steely blue eyes. His usual look was a golf shirt, khaki shorts and flip-flops.
Married to Ashley for nine years, they had two children. Rarely taking time to think beneath the facade of many issues, Judd spent time taking care of his young family with little time for introspection. He wasn’t so different from most folks. Eddie knew this.
Judd could not imagine what he was hunting for, and as Eddie rifled through dusty boxes, he suddenly felt empty-handed, wanting to reciprocate. He thought of nothing of worth that he could conjure up to give the old man. This worried him. Judd told him that.
Preoccupied while looking through his belongings, Eddie gently gestured to him, waving his hands in the air while saying, “You’ve given me plenty. But, I guess you don’t realize that, now do you?”
Before Judd could utter a syllable and from calm to excitement and without warning, Eddie blurted, “Ah, yes. Eureka! Here it is!”
Before rescuing the gift from the box, Eddie peered down at the prize. There was a glow about his eyes. He took a breath and pulled it up and out. As if it was a gold brick, he handed Judd a ream of yellowed paper, tattered and dog-eared at many of the edges. Tinged with a scent of mildew, what Eddie held, Judd knew, must be significant. As Eddie flipped through and peered at many of the pages, Judd saw that what he was handing him was a collection of handwritten stories.
Taken by the gesture, Judd asked, “Why are you giving these to me? I mean, this looks like a lifetime of work. You ought to keep it.” At best, he was bewildered.
Eddie put his hands in his pockets and, leaning forward on his toes, explained, “I don’t need them where I’m going. Besides, my hands can no longer tolerate holding a pen for very long. Perhaps you can read them and put them to good use in some way. Maybe it will get you off your duff and get you to write something too. You know it is in you. It’s a gift…by the way, they’re parables.”
Overheated from his search, Eddie sat in a recliner under a maple tree in his front yard, waiting to be loaded onto the moving van. He looked up intently at the massive tree boughs, as his thoughts accompanied the expression of resolve on his face. He motioned to Judd to pull up a kitchen chair from the mountain of boxes on the other side of the slate walkway, and to join him.
In the fashion of Socrates dispensing philosophies under an olive tree, Eddie began to expound. “When we read stories, you know, it is natural for us to pull personal meaning from them. This in itself is a good thing. Don’t you think? Writers like it when this happens. As I like to think, it may lead to introspection—I like that word. But at the very least stories help us think. Are you with me?”
Judd was a trifle confused. “So what is it all about? I mean, you always tell me that the answers are inside of each of us. I bet that’s all here. The answers you have found in you?”
With his long, thin finger pointing to his own chest, Eddie answered. “Precisely. I did say that, but it doesn’t mean I know all the answers. In complexity, there is simplicity. In simplicity, there is complexity. Answers are not always the result of equations or any logical order—if so, we would unfetter all the mysteries, be superhumans, and not, well, just humans. There is nothing perfect about any one of us. I however, think that stories, not just mine, are like beautiful sunflowers. They hold beliefs and values that somehow creep and root themselves into most civilizations. Like a tall sunflower staring us in the face we sometimes still ask—so where’s this flower?”
The workers were moving his life’s possessions with such disturbing ease. “This move shouldn’t be this easy and this fast,”Judd thought. Eddie saluted the movers as they filed by him. Except for Eddie’s recliner, all of his belongings that once covered his yard were securely in the truck.
In spite of the commotion around him, Judd began to think of all the times he and Eddie had talked and he was only now beginning to connect the dots like the excuses Eddie made by walking over to Judd’s house, ringing the doorbell to borrow a dictionary. “Eddie needs a dictionary? How come I didn’t think that was odd,” Judd scolded himself. He thought of the times that Eddie would show up with a beer in hand when Judd cooked burgers on the grill, or wanted to borrow a snow shovel in May. These were times that Eddie had something to say. Sometimes Judd listened and other times he was preoccupied. “I wish I had listened all those times,” Judd thought.
Eddie continued, “We’re all the same. The mores and ways of life are probed and pondered today just as they were by those who resided at Stonehenge or by the ancient Greeks, or the Bushmen of Africa or the contemporaries of Confucius, or the greeter at Wal-Mart or the neighbor over the fence, or me or you. Did I leave out anyone? These truths are worthy of another look, don’t you think? Perhaps two or three more looks. That’s all I’m saying.”
As Judd looked away for a moment and turned back to answer, Eddie seemed to have vanished. Scanning the yard, Judd noticed that Eddie was slowly climbing the front steps of his home to determine the progress of the workers. Judd stayed, enjoying the warmth of Eddie’s lingering presence. Although it was getting close to noon and hotter than ever, he was content as he imagined what the old man was all about. He began flipping through the ragged paper and found himself easing back into the recliner. He thumbed through the musty pages, reading snippets of different stories and passages. He found himself mesmerized.
Judd, put the bundle of papers on his lap, took a breath, got up, and began to search for Eddie. More questions swirled in his head.
Eddie walked to the rear of the house, orchestrating the movers. Judd caught up with him and followed.
After a moment, Eddie pulled himself away from the mundane and in awkward silence, walked to the main staircase six feet from his opened front door. He sat down on the eighth step. He crossed his legs at his bony ankles and placed his graceful hands to the back of his head. Sunbeams shot through the door. He watched the workers as they swiftly moved in and out of his house.
Eddie’s home was empty. He stood and then moved with a lightened gait, as if a burden melted away. He walked outside and down the brick stoop one last time.
Judd picked up his pace to join him in the front of the house. The movers were busy repositioning the recliner in the recesses of the truck. It was done. With a yank of a canvas strap, the back door of the truck slammed shut. Just like that, his belongings were stowed away, never to return.
Eddie shouted, “Remember to deliver the furniture and boxes that are marked in red and send the rest on to the Salvation Army.” The men nodded and Eddie waved them on. He turned back to Judd.
“My parables, if you can call them that, are an attempt to show that there is meaning in all the ordinary things we do. Life lessons can be learned wherever we are, whether in a bustling city, on a farm in America’s heartland, or in a suburban neighborhood. There is much we can learn from the taxi driver, the stock broker, the dairy farmer and the neighborhood hairdresser…oh yeah, I learned a thing or two from her over the years,” he said smugly. He sighed, placing his hand on Judd’s shoulder. “In a way, they teach us who we are. Wisdom is not only right in front of us—it is within us. The truth that evades us lies within. It always has.”
The moment fell silent. Eddie turned to look at his house one more time. He faced Judd and with a toothy smile he said, “I’m ready.”
A moment later, he walked to his car and got in. Still smiling, he waved to Judd. Judd reciprocated.
“I’ll visit,” Judd said.
“No you won’t. You don’t know where I’m headed. Do me one better.”
“What’s that?”
“Look inside and add the next chapter.”
With that, Eddie drove away, not waiting for his neighbor’s response. Judd’s mind was empty and he said nothing. In solitude, he was motionless. But when Eddie was out of sight, his mind was now replete, and silently bade him a farewell with a promise.
“Goodbye Eddie. I will.”
The Kingdom of God is within you.
Jesus
Be a lamp to yourself. Be your own confidence. Hold to the truth within yourself, as to the only truth.
The Buddha
In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after the Truth.
Gandhi
Seek not good from without; seek it within yourself, or you will never find it.
Epictetus—second century
Ask questions from your heart and you will be answered from the heart.
Omaha—Native American
*****
Sometimes it takes storytelling to convince any spiritual being what he or she should already know. Truth comes from within. Simple? Maybe, but truth leads to wisdom, which is the tenuous center amid science and faith. What is truth? Who is truth? We must pause to discern how truth is real and part of our daily lives. But it is not enough to know oneself. As truth lies beneath our bones, so it lies beneath our neighbor’s bones as well. Simple?
*****
Want to read more parables of enlightened everyday living? Here’s the book.
What did you think of Eddie Zen? Let me know in the comments below.
About E.G. Kardos
I am a fiction writer and the author of five books. My writing draws inspiration from the beauty surrounding us all—both in nature and in each other. Spirituality, friendship, love, and our connection to the universe inspire me to write. Here’s more about me and my books.
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