One Time, One Meeting

All conditioned things, Zen teachings tell us, are impermanent. A conditioned thing is a phenomenon that arises from contingent causes and conditions. A pickup truck, a million-dollar home in California, a relationship, thought, or state of mind—all arise from particular causes and conditions;  all are subject to what Zen calls the “law of impermanence.”

For a graphic illustration of that law, I would recommend a website called Sleep Like the Dead, which purports to offer objective ratings of mattresses and their manufacturers. In an industry rife with hyperbole (“The best mattress you’ll ever sleep on!), expensive products ($ 3500 for a Tempurpedic Flex Elite), and promotional websites disguised as reviews, Sleep Like the Dead provides factual information and statistical analysis. Employing such criteria as “owner satisfaction,” “heat retention,” “motion isolation,” and “romance suitability,” the analysts at SLD rate and compare types, brands, and models on a scale ranging from “poor” to “very good.” (In case you’re wondering, a mattress suitable for romance is one that provides adequate “bounce.” Latex mattresses are highly recommended in this regard; memory foam is not).

Of the many charts and graphs on Sleep Like the Dead, one of the most striking is entitled “Satisfaction by Year of Ownership.” This graph tracks “owner satisfaction” over a period of fifteen years. During the first year of ownership, the data shows, around 85% of owners report satisfaction with their mattresses. After eight years, the percentage drops into the 60s. After eleven, it plummets to less than 50. Clearly, “owner satisfaction” bears a direct correlation to length of service. The longer you own your mattress, the less likely you are to be satisfied.

Less obvious, perhaps, is a reverse correlation between satisfaction and expectation. According to Sleep Like the Dead, the average lifespan of a contemporary mattress is 6.9 years. Imagine, if you will, an informed consumer who is well aware of that statistic. Why should he or she be dissatisfied if, after eight or ten years, the mattress in question no longer provides adequate comfort and support? “We suffer,” Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us, “not because things are impermanent but because we expect them to be permanent when they are not.”

Ten years ago, I purchased a black, 12-ounce kyusu—a traditional earthenware teapot with a mesh lining and a hollow side-handle—from a family-owned tea farm in northern Japan. Hand-crafted by a respected Japanese artisan, this exquisite object was expressly designed for brewing loose green tea. Every morning for the next four years, I brewed my Sencha, Fukamushi, Gyokuro, and other green teas in my elegant kyusu. I grew quite fond of it.

Then one morning, as I was removing wet tea leaves from the kyusu, a chunk of its thin black wall fell out. In an instant, its useful life was over. Dismayed by my loss, and uncertain whether to replace the kyusu with another of its kind, I wrote to the owner of the farm. This was his response:

We are so glad to hear that you continued to use HOHRYU Kyusu with so ardor and caution. . . . Endurance of your HOHRYU kyusu was probably enough. It is designed to be light weight as well as usual handcrafted high grade TOKONAME kyusu. At same time they are all designed to have enough endurance. Indeed your HOHRYU had been continuously used every morning for 4 years. Thank you again.

Reviewing this letter, I was aware that its author was a merchant defending the quality of his product. At the same time, I was charmed by his language and instructed by his implicit outlook. Unconsciously, I had assumed that my kyusu was more or less permanent. By contrast, the author viewed the “endurance” of that object as finite and appropriate.  For many of us, I suspect, impermanence is a kind of specter, haunting our every moment. We fear, reject, and sometimes loathe it. But in the view implied by the letter, kyusus, mattresses, and our own vulnerable bodies are impermanent phenomena in the stream of life. They arise, endure for a while, and eventually dissipate, in a way that is both inevitable and natural.

What is not inevitable is the attitude with which we respond to that reality. Deny, minimize, or ignore it, and we will only increase our suffering. Acknowledge and absorb it, and we may suffer less. I am reminded of John Millington Synge’s tragic play Riders to the Sea (1904), where the widow Maurya, who has lost her husband and six sons to the sea, delivers one of the most powerful closing lines in twentieth-century drama:

Michael has a clean burial in the far north, by the grace of the Almighty God. Bartley will have a fine coffin out of the white boards, and a deep grave surely. What more can we want than that? No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied.

________

An explanation of the graph and the criteria used to determine percentages may be found at www.sleeplikethedead.com.

J. M. Synge, The Complete Plays (Methuen, 1981), 106.