One Time, One Meeting

It’s winter in Western New York, and this morning our driveway is filled with new-fallen snow. As I look out at that white expanse, I am reminded of a poem by Billy Collins, poet of American domestic life.

Entitled “Shoveling Snow with Buddha,” Collins’ poem depicts two men at work in a snow-filled driveway. One is the narrator, who might be Everyman—or at least every man who owns a home and lives in a northern climate. The other is the Buddha, who, as the narrator observes, is out of his customary habitat:

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok

you would never see him doing such a thing,

tossing the dry snow over the mountain

of his bare, round shoulder,

his hair tied in a knot,

a model of concentration.

– – –

Even the season is wrong for him.

In all his manifestations, is it not warm and slightly humid?

Is this not implied by his serene expression,

that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?

Unlikely workmates, one might say. And though the two are toiling harmoniously together, they appear to have little in common. With every heave of snow, the narrator notes, they become “lost to each other / in these sudden clouds of [their] own making, / these fountain-bursts of snow.”  And even when they are visible to each other, their ways of working set them apart.

The narrator, one infers, is a good-natured, affable fellow. He enjoys the outdoors, and even though his present chore will consume the better part of the morning, he doesn’t mind. He is also a talkative, opinionated soul, who likens shoveling snow to a religious experience. “This is so much better than a sermon in church,” he declares. “This is the true religion, the religion of snow, / and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky.” Perhaps it is Sunday morning, and he is playing hooky. In any event, he rattles on, offering a running commentary on his experience.

The Buddha, however, is too absorbed to listen:

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow

as if it were the purpose of existence,

as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway

you could back the car down easily

and drive off into the vanities of the world

with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

In contrast to the narrator, who stands at a remove from his task and can’t stop talking, the Buddha labors “in the generous pocket of his silence,” immersed in the work at hand. In the language of Zen, he is in a state of samadhi, or one-pointed concentration. He is performing samu, or silent work practice, an integral component of Zen meditation.  And as he “drives the thin blade again / deep into the glittering white snow,” he exemplifies the state of muga, in which the duality of self and other dissolves, and subject and object become one. For those in that state, commentary becomes superfluous and personal views extraneous. One does what must be done.

Given their differences, the narrator and the Buddha might seem to inhabit two different worlds. The narrator embodies what Zen calls “ordinary,” discriminating mind, which engages in such activities as comparing two religions and judging one superior to the other. Conversing incessantly with itself, that mind also speaks out loud, offering its views and judgments to whoever will listen. By contrast, the Buddha exemplifies “Buddha mind,” which is silent, open, and grounded in interdependent reality. If the Buddha’s mind resembles a freshly cleared driveway, the narrator’s resembles the car with its broken heater fan, navigating the vanities of the world.

Yet, according to classical Zen teachings, ordinary mind and Buddha mind are not two separate things. The one depends on the other. In Billy Collins’s poem, this interpenetration is dramatized in a surprising moment, when the Buddha suddenly breaks his silence and steps, as it were, out of character:

After this, he asks,

can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk

and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table

while you shuffle the deck,

and our boots stand dripping by the door.*

In this brief exchange, apparent opposites are reconciled: outdoors and indoors, coldness and warmth, work and play, ordinary mind and Buddha mind. The exotic Eastern image of the Buddha merges with the Western domestic world of cards, hot chocolate, and dripping boots.