Cycle & Recycled Zen
There was a Buddhist Zen master of the early 1920's who resided in Chungczen, a province of China. His name was similar to the province name and perhaps his parents picked his name more easily by doing this. His name was Chungzencye Dhou, but he went by his surname of Dhou as it was more simple to say. Anyway, as a youth he was found to be very lazy in his habits and he had a tandem bicycle where he always sat at the back position and allowed another person, being his father or his brother, sometimes even his mother to do most if not all of the pushing and the pedalling for him.
This went on through his teenage years until one day he was riding along and looking around in a carefree but lazily relaxed style as his mother pushed him along once more on the tandem bicycle.
A man they had just ridden passed, old and wizen up said in a soft and low voice maybe to Dhou, or maybe and seemingly to no one in particular.
"Your mother pushed you out once before my son, why allow her to keep pushing you still now too, my good son. Push yourself by not pushing yourself. Cycle your bike by not cycling your bike, but don't never allow another to push or cycle for you ever again, my good lad, ever again."
He had said all this in his slow but authoritarian and all wise sounding voice which was really only a soft and nearly unhearable whisper amongst the crowd of people also moving along and riding their own bicycles in the busy and boisterously noisy streets of the small town.
He went on,
"Take what you can my son, you have a potential to ride more than a cycle but will help others one day to ride through their lives with what you can share to them."
Dhou rode along for another mile or two with his mother still pushing the bike, when it suddenly hit him what the old Zen Master had meant. It took that long for the soft whisper to reach past his still lazy ears, which had never really listened to others properly or fully before either. To achieve and to be himself he had to recycle himself by not going along with another's journey, even if they are the ones pushing and doing the work for you. He thought and pondered on this so much as his mother continued to pedal along on her tandem bicycle making all the extra effort for the two of them put together. She had carried him since his birth and was still carrying him. He felt a bit sad and sorry at this thought as it cycled through his mind and it was about to leave his mind, but he pulled it then right back to himself.
"Life had to be about taking your own journey." He jumped down from the bicycle at this realisation and returned to the feet of the old master.
And he said to him, "Can I be your student, O great and revered revealer of truth."
The Master smiled, and said gently but so pointedly and meaningfully:
"When you are ready to ride your own bike and treat me not as a revered master but as another rider you can come back for further instruction, my son."
So Dhou went off and bought himself another bicycle and rode it around the province and it was his bent, or maybe even his destiny, to one day, maybe 15 years later to be riding along a mountain trail and pushing for all he was worth, puffing and sweating and struggling as he made hard work of the steep climb up the mountain track, rough and rocky was the way.
And then he heard an old familiar voice whispering even quieter than the first time he had heard it those 15 long years ago.
He looked around and saw the old master sitting cross legged on a large rock on the left side of the road or track he was moving along. He stopped and said to him, but what did you say? Did you say something to me just then? For even after 15 years his ears were still a bit lazy and so his awareness still a bit lower than he thought that it was now.
The old master only smiled and said that by pushing yourself you always miss the real message and so you should never allow the Zen mind to leave you, and your physical body and thoughts to be all of you as you struggle along. Life is not a struggle, but a cycle and cycling is never a push and a struggle. The cycle of life is continuously sweet and is only ever seen by never pushing but by allowing life itself to gently move you to its own cycle, my son.
And Dhou upon hearing these words was recycled again and so in another word was enlightened. He became known after this, and for the next 60 years of his long life, as the recycled Zen Master as he was often seen riding along, still on his old mothers tandem insisting that he be up front of the bike and his student at the rear. And he always knew by this test if his new student was really cycling for life, for mastership or still for himself. This was how he himself chose his own students in exactly the way the old master had chosen him and he had never known this until 15 long years had already cycled by as he cycled along beside life, rather than in life. The master had already chosen him right from their very first meeting. He had been a passenger in life, rather than a participant and a cycler through the cycles of life, while not really cycling himself. To cycle without cycling, to do without doing, to be without being.
And the cycle went on for Dhou and goes on continuously for us all in this way. Do we cycle for life or are we just cycling for ourselves? Dhou used to cycle along by not cycling but he wasn't really cycling at all. Until he cycled along by really not cycling but now cycling through the extra awareness that he was still cycling but not really just cycling. He had taken that long to become enlightened.
As in the old saying " We see bicycles as bicycles at the beginning of our journey". And then later on we find that "bicycles are not bicycles after all" and then even later still as we start to be really recycled in our thinking and so too, then is our vision and we once again see, " That bicycles are really only just bicycles after all". They always were.