THE “RIGHT” CHOICE by Bill Walz
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
– Yogi Berra (for those who don’t know, not an Indian guru)
"I’m a movie buff and sometimes there are moments in films that just
capture the essence of some major archetypal issue of life, expressing and
encapsulating, sometimes wordlessly, the essence of a human conflict, truth
or wisdom. I find such a moment in the opening scene of the film Yojimbo,
by master Japanese director Akira Kurasawa. In the scene, a 19th century
ronin, or masterless samurai, acted by the magnificent Toshiro Mifune,
dressed not in classical samurai finery and armor, but dusty and worn simple
clothing befitting his now anchorless and impoverished status of
unemployment, is walking down a path that forks. He stops. He looks at
this choice confronting him. Which path to take? Then after a pause of
consideration he casually picks up a stick and tosses it in the air. The stick
lands pointing towards one of the paths. He nods his head, then rolls his
shoulders, and proceeds decisively down that path. A choice has been
made.
The path leads to a world of trouble (or there would be no movie), but he
never, not for a moment, demonstrates any ambivalence about the path he
now walks. Moment to moment, he simply steps into whatever the moment
presents and does what is necessary to be in honor and courage with what
presents itself. The beauty of the scene to me is in the willingness to allow
that, despite our delusion of personal choice, basically fate (and a samurai
would say Karma) is the actual determiner of our path, and then it is our
willingness to give that path every ounce of our life energy that gives our life
meaning. To a samurai, this is the code of Bushido, and it seems to me an
excellent guide to a life deeply and well-lived; a willingness to say “yes!” to
life, not “maybe – only if it seems comfortable and safe.”
I believe Americans suffer from a malady of too many choices, or to be more
specific, we suffer from a delusion, for some, an obsession, that there are
“right” choices for us to make on this vast buffet of choices that is American
life. Believe me, I know there are better and worse choices for us to make,
and that some people repeatedly make just awful choices, but that’s not the
point I want to explore. I want to point out that a very big problem for many
is often in the second-guessing and hesitation we bring to the choices we
make. We fail to bring commitment, honor and courage to our choices. We
fail to say “Yes!” to life. We are plagued by ambivalence and self-
indulgence concerning whether a choice brings maximum benefit to us. Our
problem isn’t in making wrong choices; it is in bringing inadequate
commitment to the choices we make.
The great Vietnamese Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, is known for the koan,
“This moment is a perfect moment, this moment is my refuge.” He is not
placing conditions on the moment. He is not saying this moment if it is
exactly as I wish it to be is my refuge; he is saying THIS MOMENT – exactly
as it is. How can this be? What if this moment is dealing with a difficult
person being unreasonable and ugly? What if this moment contains conflict
and disappointment? What if it contains physical or emotional pain? What if
this moment upends all the plans I have for my life? What if this moment is
just boring?
We are here entering into the secret of Zen. We are entering into the secret
of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, of Ram Dass’s Be Here Now, of
mysticism, of Stoicism, of wisdom traditions of every culture. 12th Century
Zen Master, Rinzai famously queried, “This moment, what is lacking?”
Again, no qualifications. Is this some philosophical/spiritual trick? Well, if
“trick” means skill, yes, and it is a skill for which we are all completely and
naturally equipped. It is a trick we have all pulled off successfully many
times.
Every time we have struggled with some difficult aspect of life, we continue
to struggle and struggle until there comes a realization of the uselessness of
this struggle with whatever the “it” is. There comes a moment where we
choose to just get on with life, to do whatever is needed by the
circumstance of the moment and incorporate whatever the “it” is into our
normal experience. In that moment we have done the trick. Our problem is
we don’t pay attention to the power of this trick. Unlike the Zen masters
who are paying very close attention to every nuance of life in its unfolding,
realizing life IS moments unfolding, we don’t notice this power, that all there
is in this life is THIS MOMENT, and the skill, the “trick” of life is to live fully
each moment, but we keep forgetting how good this trick is. We keep
slipping back into living in the delusion of a “me-in-time” where we have a
story of me, a fairy tale of the way we want life to be where any interruption
in this story is reason for great upset, consternation, suffering.
We have all had difficult challenges, setbacks in the “story of me.” These
were times of suffering in our lives, and we have all come to the moment
where we let go of the story of our affliction and moved on. In that moment,
we pulled off the trick of letting go of our resistance to what is, allowing it to
be our “perfect moment, our refuge.” Zen encourages us to pay attention to
these moments and gain skill with this trick so we gradually may go from
taking two years to recover from some injury or setback in our story, to two
months, to two weeks, to two days, to two hours, to two minutes, to two
seconds where we realize, “This moment, what is lacking?” We discover the
power of Now, of Being Here, Now - of taking the fork in the road. It could
be said that developing proficiency at this trick is what “practice” in
Buddhism is all about.
Often, in retrospect, we can look at times in our lives that were filled with
suffering and see them as times that brought our greatest personal growth,
or took us in an unexpected direction that gave new and deeper meaning to
our lives. Many have been baffled by a person who describes some
seemingly terrible calamity as a gift in their lives. We fail to realize that
every person has the power to do this trick, and everyone has done this
trick. It is the remembering and applying this trick that is the challenge
when we are so accustomed to staying stuck in being the victim of
adversity.
In fact, a useful way to understand neurosis is to see how people find
specialness through attachment to their suffering and just stay stuck at the
fork in their road, pacing in circles of anxiety or anger or despondency. If
they would just make the choice to take the fork, any fork that allows them
to get on with their life, and give it every ounce of positive intention and
gratitude they have, they would be cured of their neurosis. The false
specialness they invested in their neurosis would fall away into the true
specialness, the wonder that is life, every moment - as a matter of fact, this
moment.
No, there are not right choices for us to agonize over; there is only taking
the forks in the road that life puts in front of us and giving our full life energy
to whatever is on the road. Then it will be a right choice. And remember,
there will always be more forks – and we are always free to take them."
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