Away, away my saving grace That I might look upon your face
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No one's gonna take my love And no one's gonna take my love And no one's gonna take my love away No one's gonna take my love
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*Written by: Anthony Molina, Gurunam Singh
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Classic Zen koan -
At the top of a one hundred-foot pole an iron cow gives birth to a calf.
The late Zen Teacher, Albert Low, commenting on this koan, in his book The Iron Cow of Zen, "This precariousness comes from two conflicting forces, symbolized by the sterility of iron and the fertility of giving birth: we cannot go on and we have to go on." See, even not going on is going on. Refusing to go on is an action. We cannot not act, and our action creates.
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Before proceeding, I want the reader to know that at some impasses in life, we need to remove ourselves as soon as possible. Yet, this, too, is moving on through. An example is when one is in an abusive relationship and needs to get out of it. That getting out is moving through an "iron" situation to a new birth, of "blood and flesh." The iron of it is, like many major changes, it may take a lot of courage. Hopefully, this all will make more sense after you read the rest of this posting.
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"How is it possible? Surely, this can't happen? Iron cannot give birth to flesh." Yet, it did, and it does. And, it will give birth again. The iron cow keeps showing up in our lives, again and again and ... .
We have all been atop that hundred-foot pole. We have climbed, so to speak, to a point in life. Then, we face an iron-cow situation. Iron, inflexible, hard, cold, no breathing, no pulse. No matter what we do, the cow will not give birth. Which is to say, we are at an impasse. We cannot go through. We cannot go around. We cannot go under or over.
What do we do? We often fight. We might try to bewitch life by applying what we see to be a spiritual practice to bend reality to fit the shape we think reality should take, and now.
For religious persons, they may use prayer like magic, a way to trick God, or at least get God to do what God would not do otherwise - unless being begged. And, like life, God, too, can appear like an iron cow. Sometimes, this leads persons to dispose of their religious faith altogether. They wanted a God that always gives birth, never says "No" or "Says, not now, you'll have to wait." They wanted a God that fit them, not them fit God. Sad!
We can keep waiting for the calf. Or maybe, we stop waiting. And, perhaps, that is a wise thing: stop waiting. We exhaust all means and ourselves, and we stop, are still, are silent. We, sitting at the edge of our known, yield to the unknown, the yet to be. We do not give up; we simply give up the struggle.
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Stopping is not the opposite of not-stopping. There is a space where you are neither trying to move forward nor not move forward; yet, you are not trying to stay where you are, either. An invitation lives and breathes inside that space. But you do not know how or when or what.
When my first girlfriend ended our relationship, I was heartbroken. Then, shortly after, I started college after a year of work, first at a clothes factory, then a wood yard. To my dismay, she showed up at the beginning of the fall semester, too.
Weeks followed weeks... many weeks... and I could not get beyond the heartbreak roadblock. I prayed, and nothing happened. I was stalled at the point she had broken up with me many months before.
One day, I woke up, got dressed, and began the forty-minute drive to school. Something had changed. The pain was gone. And it remained gone. I was positively stunned by the sudden change. A calf had been born from the iron cow.
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Much of life is about waiting at an impasse. Life refuses to move on with us; rather, it bars our way. We may shout into the dark, but no voice returns except our own echo.
When a youth, I learned of the art of praying through. The idea was when at an existential logjam, pray... keep praying... and keep praying. Do not fight. Stop. Pray until you see the way opens.
When one starts meditation practice, they find themselves doing this much of the time: sitting silently, staring into a gridlock. They learn the art of meditating through. Zen Buddhists say, "Don't push the river."
In meditating through, life is still moving, and we are, even when we feel thrust onto the banks alone. We learn to sit silently with the feeling of being stuck.
This practice of silence and stillness is an active participation, a cooperation with unseen movements. In contemplation, we learn to release our sense of control, realizing much bigger motions are in motion than our wishes. The impasse holds promise. It can become our friend, but only if we cease fighting reality.
By yielding at the impasse, we receive the gifts of patience and surrender. We come to discover surrender is not a doing-nothing; it is an active posture in which we act - we just do not keep trying to make the iron cow give birth. We learn to trust the situation will open, even if we have no idea how.
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The situation open is not opposite the situation not-open. The fleshly, freshly-born calf is taking shape within the iron cow before you see it. The way through is already present in the dilemma. The impasse is part of the energy preparing you to move on, when it is time to proceed onward from what has appeared to block your moving on. You come to see the iron cow was fertile, after all.
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Last, one thing that happens in the "Yes" to the iron cow is release from suffering. The situation might be painful, but we add suffering by fighting what is. Emotional suffering, which is self-inflicted, ceases, even if the pain does not, the moment we yield to what is.
