Zen Ties Views
I have spent this week feeling a great deal of discomfort as a result of what I learned about plastic garbage from reading TRACKING TRASH by Loree Griffin Burns. I consider myself an environmentalist, yet I regularly -- and without a thought -- use plastic bags from the rolls at the produce market. I do reuse most of them but eventually they all get discarded. The fact is, I don't really keep track of how many I use or how many times they get reused as they all look the same. But thanks to Jon Muth's lesson in ZEN TIES, and the information in Loree Burns' eye-opening TRACKING TRASH, I have decided to try being more conscious of the plastic bags by attempting a new practice.
In ZEN TIES, Jon Muth gently reminds us that we are all connected and interdependent whether we recognize our neighbor's face or not, and that, It is easy to believe we are each waves and forget we are also the ocean. And through his sharing of Soen Roshi's lesson he provides a simple and powerful example to all of us who are so immersed in today's gotta-be-new, consumption-crazy, throw-away culture where sometimes even our elders are tossed aside.
Both Zen Shorts and Zen Ties are excellent books for children. The lessons that they teach are appropriate for children of all ages. My two girls ages 2 and 5 have been telling me to 'stop carrying the lady' or 'should we give them the moon?' You'll have to read the books to get the deeper meaning of these statements. Little kids can begin to learn lessons that many adults have not yet mastered.
Summer has arrived s— and so has Koo, Stillwater's haiku-speaking young nephew. And when Stillwater encourages Koo, and his friends Addy, Michael, and Karl to help a grouchy old neighbor in need, their efforts are rewarded in unexpected ways. Zen Ties is a disarming story of compassion and friendship that reaffirms the importance of our ties to one another.
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