She's a Funny Lady

Ruthie likes me to sit in the bathroom and talk to her while she showers. Works for me, and as I was sitting there tonight I started leafing through The Little Zen Companion that lives on the toilet tank. I don't really get the whole Zen thing, and don't much care to, (being an American I'm not sure I'm capable anyway,) but I dig books like this because they say things like,

Zen is the unsymbolization of the world.

So I'm sitting there flipping and I find another one I like and read it aloud to the Ruth:

If you cannot find the truth where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

And she, without missing a beat, says, "In your butt. Ask me another one." And I'm imagining the two of us chewing through this little book like a workbook, flippantly penciling in answers to timeless Zen koans until we're done and need a new one.

Search back into your own vision -- think back to the mind that thinks. Who is it?

And again, without any hesitation she says, "Your mom. That one's easy." (Ma, I'll explain that particular bit of vernacular tomorrow.) "Go again."

When the Many are reduced to the One, to what is the One reduced?

And this time she pauses for a half a second to think before she answers, "Your butt again."