Pepper Zen

I haven’t read much Leunig, but before dinner last night, Detta sent me this: 

     I gave it a quick glance just before I tended the yellow rice and coconut curry whitefish (with chickpeas to make it go further for the 12 hungry diners) and waited for Detta and Vic to arrive.  Yes, it was funny and touching.

     But during dinner, Pepper, who sat beside me in her box, was behaving like a Buddhist guru.  Tony was making derogatory marks about ‘the duck.’

     I said, ‘SHE has a name.’

     Someone said, ‘roast duck.’

     During dessert, everyone was praising Dr John’s chocolate cake.  

     ‘It tastes better this time,' he said, 'because I didn’t use butter, I used duck fat.’  

     The men and boys laughed.  I fumed.

     I turned to comfort Pepper.  To my surprise she maintained a demeanour of knowing calm. She didn’t squirm, chirp or quack which I wanted to do in defence of her good character.  Don't think for a minute she wasn't following the conversation.  Oh, she was. But she accepted the pejorative comments and let them go on their way.  

     In fact, she gazed up at Dr John with an expression of loving tolerance.  She was at peace. She was PEACE.  She was LOVE.  I was enveloped by a strange, warm, fuzzy feeling.  An epiphany, perhaps.  I wanted to take Pepper in my arms and kiss her, share the love she was emitting like a navigational beacon.  Except she is still a bit small.  I learned patience in that moment.  I would be able to embrace Pepper soon enough.  I needed to wait.  To BE.

     I thought, I will learn a lot from this feathered teacher.  The people of this world can learn from Pepper.  Peace, acceptance, tolerance, love, being.

     While the dinner conversation buzzed, I thought about the late afternoon when I had a cup of tea in the garden with Pepper.  As I was taking the last few mouthfuls, I was thinking, Gotta cook the curry and take the dogs we are babysitting down for a wee because they are locked on the veranda, I forgot to reply to some emails and I need to check the rhythm of my latest complaint to the council about the dogs on TI, this time as a poem, the curry, more toilet paper for Pepper, ask Nicola for coconut milk, don’t forget kaffir lime leaves.

     Then it occurred to me I was actually focusing on what I had to do, not what I was doing.  I was ahead of myself.  Pepper was doing something entirely different.  She was chasing flies and ran in what appeared to be figure eights, snapping at the little black dots.  She covered a small area, a metre and a half squared max, but she did it with such focus, such intensity, that she was totally oblivious to what was going on around her.  She was IN THE MOMENT.  Where as I was in the future.

     It wasn’t until our conversation unfolded during dinner that I realised Pepper had been sent to me to teach me to slow down and be.  She is an enlightened being who has appeared to end my suffering, my eternal rushing around in figure eights (and circles) while I think of what I have to do, what I’d done, possibly badly and how I could fix it, what I wanted to write, what I’d written that needed tweaking.  Never being in the moment.

     I am convinced Pepper is a Buddhist duck.  I have struggled with Buddhism.  I have tried many times to explore the faith, but I don’t get it.  I have read the Dalai Lama and his words are too simple.  I reckon without kids and work and a mortgage and animals and boats, I might be able to sit in an elegant position and contemplate the vicissitudes of life and sprout some simple words.  

     I used to have his book, Daily Meditations.  Someone gave me a copy then I tossed it, not satisfied with his cursory approach to life.  Then Tony was cleaning a yard of a vacant house, a Gadin Ninja job, and he found another copy so he brought it home thinking it was something I’d read. I groaned when he handed it to me.  It appeared I wasn’t going to escape Buddhism as easily as tossing it in the garbage bin!

     Anyway, I made a truce with the religion.  I didn’t need it and at the end of the day, I can’t wear maroon (it’s not a flattering colour for me) and I can’t have short hair (I was taken for a boy too often when I had cropped locks).  And that was it.  I tossed Daily Meditations a second time.

     Then Pepper arrived.  It seems God wants me to explore Buddhism and I think Pepper is going to help me make sense of it.  

     And how fitting.  I mean what does a celibate, single guy draped in a crimson and yellow curtain with a number one haircut who comes from a landlocked province in central Asia have in common with me, a cynical, white, middle-class housewife with many children and animals who lives on an island close to the equator (the temperature absolutely rules out wearing drapes and I will not cut my hair).  I relate to Pepper and everything about her.

     Pepper is my teacher.  I re-read Leunig's words.  He is right.  Pepper will lead me into ‘wisdom, joy and innocence.’

     She is my Buddha.  I am the student.  My HECS payment will be devotion to Pepper.  Pepper Zen.  I AM.