“Never give a sword to a man who can’t dance.” —Celtic proverb
When you pick up a sword and learn to swing it properly, the very first thing you learn is that the sword goes wherever your mind goes. It’s always more mind than body with a sword, although when in balance, mind and body work as one entity. Therefore as one trains the mind, so goes the body, and eventually so goes the sword. It’s the same with memory—memories appear when the mind goes looking. We can be trapped by our memories, even imprisoned by them, or we can use Manjushri’s sword of discriminating wisdom to cut through that prison and liberate ourselves into a new way of seeing, or a new way of being.
It’s also true to say that a middle-aged man like myself remembers certain things more vividly as he gets older, and sometimes those things become more detailed with the passage of time. I’m not sure why that is, or even how it’s possible. Perhaps it’s just the way the mind works when we remember fondly the things we enjoyed most, and therefore they become more vivid. In any case, the one thing I do know from practicing Zen for almost 25 years is that our experiences in life are directly connected to the experiences in our minds. Mind comes first, always, and the Universe unfolds from there. It really comes down to taming the mind, learning how to use it, where to place it, and then it can become a rather supernatural tool. Except that there’s nothing supernatural about it at all—it’s the most natural thing in the Universe.
One of the first memories I can recall as a toddler was when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. It was 1969 and I was just a little over 2 years old, but I remember my mother waking me up to watch the first lunar landing on a small TV at the local municipal airport in Olympia, Washington. My next memory was listening to the forest that surrounded our home as the sound of thousands of croaking frogs enveloped me, something I experienced multiple times. There were also particular foods I remember back then, like the giant buttermilk pancakes our cowboy neighbors cooked on their outdoor griddle, and the bowls of spaghetti and French bread my mom would make on weekend nights when we’d stay home and watch movies on the TV. But it was the walks in the woods, both as a child and as an adult, where I came to appreciate the natural beauty of this world. It’s amazing how a small forest can impact a young mind, and it’s because that small forest is the entire Universe, encapsulated.
I remember loving jazz and show tunes, which my grandparents would play on their crackling tube stereo in the dark walnut cabinet. I loved rock & roll when I first heard Elvis Presley on a warbly cassette deck, and I started to play my first rickety old drum set around the age of 10, practicing in the hayloft of our barn. The neighbors would comment that they could hear me playing across the field.
The years flew by, high school was an indiscernible blur, and all of a sudden I found myself in college studying jazz and classical music. I often went hiking or rock climbing with my friends in the mountains and cliffs in the numerous landscapes of the upper Puget Sound, and swimming or waterskiing in the Puget Sound became my regional baptism. By my second year in college, I was an exchange student in Europe and my next great love began to reveal itself—travel. At some point I realized that everything I wanted to do in life was converging at the same time—music, travel, learning, and it was all connected. That’s how it happens for most of us, you just kind of feel your way through life, frequently stumbling and even falling, but then you realize that you’re doing exactly what your soul wants to do. It may take you some years to find it, but you must never stop trying.
Then came 1987, the year I dropped out of college, moved to Seattle, and began to study Kung Fu with a Chinese master in the international district. That was a great training period, which later evolved into other forms of Kung Fu, Aikido, and Chinese and Japanese sword training. Training with a sword is amazing for focusing the mind, because in a way, it’s much like drumming or dancing. It’s all about rhythm moving through the mind and body, into your hands, and into the sword. This proved to be superb training for all the work I would do as a drummer, because the union of the sword is much like the union of the drums. This is Zen, where the mind becomes the form itself, and there is no separation between the doer and thing being done.
Zen practice has many shapes and forms, but at its most essential, it is about working towards a clear and awakened, absolute mind. The practice varies from silent, seated meditation (Zazen), to walking meditation (Kinhin), to studying ancient texts, and everyday mindfulness. When the absolute mind begins to emerge, a deep sense of peace begins to settle into your being, and even when the stresses of life return, which they inevitably do, you can return to that ancient place of understanding, deep in the core of your being. It doesn’t mean that the speed bumps of life will no longer emerge to rattle your foundation—they most certainly will, and usually more intensely than before. However, the steadiness you have learned to cultivate in your Zen mind will prevail over everything, and that is because you have become, everything.
I now find myself surpassing the age of 50, which is more than halfway through this life, and likely closer to the end of it. What has emerged in my half century of life is the deep understanding that absolutely everything in the Universe is connected. Scientists are now proving this—everything is connected at the subatomic level, across the infinite folds of time and space, even to the far side of the known Universe. What’s even more fascinating is they are finding how the human mind influences the outcome of these experiments when they are observed by scientists. Albert Einstein had no explanation for this observer effect so he just called it “spooky action at a distance.” What he was really seeing is Zen mind at work in the control room.
When I came to this realization myself, I began to see great truths emerging in all things, all people, and all events. Sometimes the truth is so obvious, everyone can see it. Other times it is more nuanced and will take time for the complexity to play out. However, every time it is affirmed—there are no 2 things in the Universe, it’s only One Thing, expressing itself in an infinite number of ways. Each of us is just one of those ways, and I like that much more than the idea of an old, unchanging man floating in the sky, dictating the outcome of events with wrathful indignation. If the Universe is ever changing, then the Creator is also changing, therefore the Creator must be inside each of us and not separate from us.
At this point in my life, I’ve come to the conclusion that every day, no matter what I am doing, I try to make that day into a great piece of art. What I mean by that is we should be conscious of all the things we do as we make each day special, like a unique piece of art. For me, that might manifest as a day in the studio recording, a day of writing stories, a day of running errands, a day of cleaning the house, a transcendent walk and talk on the beach, and this becomes my piece of art for the day. Sometimes I have to deal with an unpleasant person or a stressful situation, but even that can be a challenging piece of art. On those days I remind myself that all of this, the good and the bad, is a spiritual practice, and that’s the very reason why we’re all here – so that we may reach our highest potential.
It’s also important to remember that most of the world’s population does not have the same opportunities as those of us in North America and Europe. Most of the world worries about feeding their children every day, finding clean water, and keeping them safe, sheltered, and warm. Tomorrow will present even greater challenges, because most don’t even have money for tomorrow, unless they can earn it today, doing a difficult or even humiliating job that we can’t even imagine. Our problems are tiny by comparison.
All that remains then is how we conduct ourselves on a daily basis because each day is all we have. When the night sets in, hopefully we can sleep, and then it all starts anew the next day. I remind myself of this, that all life is, in fact, a rhythm. It’s in the way we walk, the way we speak, the way we work, the way we make love, and the way we do any activity on a given day—all of it is rhythm.
Dancing, for that matter, is also rhythm, is also music, and is also a kind of swordplay, as my wife would say—she was a professional Tango dancer. I wish I was a better dancer myself, but I attribute my shortcomings to some extra soul in the drumming part. In some countries, like Cuba and Senegal for example, the word for a dance is also the same for its rhythm and accompanying music. In Cuba it’s called a Rhumba; in Senegal it’s called a Sabar. All of these things— drumming, dancing, and the martial arts use both sides of the body and help to synchronize the hemispheres of the brain, balancing the winds of the body, and helping to ground and center the mind. To do any of it well, you must enter into Zen mind, even if you never knew what Zen was. It was always there before we ever gave it a name.
I’ve also come to realize that writing is a kind of rhythm, is a kind of dancing, and is a kind of music. Writing requires muscle, the muscle of Mind, and it must be used frequently to stay strong. A good writer, regardless of race or gender, whether they are a poet, essayist, novelist, or nonfiction narrator—their words will pull you through their stories with a rhythmic precision and natural flow that holds you to the page, from the beginning of the story to the end. If you read frequently— which I hope you do, you’ll notice the unique rhythm that each writer possesses. It is the signature of their language, the cadence of their storytelling.
So whatever dance you chose, or whatever sword you chose to swing in this world, make sure that it has a rhythmic feel that keeps your blade sharp. Because if you don’t, your dance will be stilted, slightly off center, and your blade will miss its mark. Get out of that dance as soon as you possibly can and find a more suitable dance, with a rhythm that fits the natural flow of your soul.
When you do that, when you’re really dancing with the beauty of your mind—that’s when your life will change, forever.