On responsibilities, rushing and learning to slow down

Even before I actually began practicing Shim Gum Do, I approached Mary Jeanette Stackhouse Kim, the World Shim Gum Do Head Master and abbot (or abbess if you prefer) of the temple about the prospect of exchanging some of my services for free or reduced class fees. I thought my writing background might prove useful in helping rework the web site (www.simgumdo.org), or that I might use my journalism training to help transcribe Sa Bu Nim’s monthly Dharma talks on Zen.

(Image from shimgumdo.org)

But, as it turns out, the masters had other plans for me. Sa Bu Nim is a prolific poet and they’ve enlisted me to help translate and edit the poems of his next book. It’s a fascinating process with the abbot and I trying to capture the images and ideas the Zen Master has crafted in Korean into English phrases, while matching the tone and tenor of his previous books.

It’s clear to me that I couldn’t do the work with Sa Bu Nim alone. His accent has led me to mistake simple words and my limited understanding of his Zen teaching has sometimes sent my brain searching for the completely wrong image to explain more difficult concepts. And even though at times I joke about being more hindrance than help, or that I am more useful in bringing my Korean-made phone with a stylus so Sa Bu Nim can access the sometimes dubious help of Google translate, Abbot Stackhouse Kim assures me that my contributions are valuable.

Translating poetry, though, is not a quick or easy process. And Sa Bu Nim hopes to have a hundred poems in this book ready early after the beginning of the year -- with all of the other work that entails: layout, copy editing, proofing, typesetting and other aspects of publishing that I don’t even know about.

So there is a real sense of urgency to complete this work, both at the level of each poem and for me in finding hours to come in to work with them. And it is a huge honor to be asked to help with this work. And I’m getting a real education in Zen philosophy as I do it.

But.

If only my week were only as simple as the calender makes it look

I have other responsibilities that I wonder if I’m neglecting. Most obviously, I’ve cut down my volunteer hours with the Perkins School for the Blind. I don’t think the quality of my work for my commercial clients is suffering, but one of them, who also has a deadline approaching, frankly hasn’t gotten as much attention as it deserves.

So it’s probably time to slow down and be more deliberate in my actions and commitments.

When I first came to Boston, I was following the advice of a sage in Worcester to emulate a fly rather than an ant. For many people, this fellow told me, the way an ant works is fine, traveling mostly in straight lines toward its goals. But I’d gotten myself trapped in a bottle, he said. And an ant trapped in a bottle will spend a lot of time walking in circles around the bottom of the inside of the bottle, not realizing the way it needs for escape is up.

A fly trapped in the bottle will frenetically zip in all directions at top speed, often crashing into the walls of the bottle, frequently seeming to make no progress. But that approach will likely lead to freedom before the more methodical way of the ant -- and besides, he said, it’s more suited to my temperament anyway.

At the time, the approach was appropriate. I was wandering and seeking a path. Now that I feel closer to having found one, perhaps it’s time to emulate the ant more than the fly for a while.