ECKANKAR: Water in the Bucket

E C K A N K A R, Religia Światła i Dźwięku Boga

Water in the Bucket

By Phil Morimitsu

There’s something that’s always been special about Saturday afternoons for me. As I was growing up, it meant playing ball in the street, the season determining the shape of the ball. In later years, Saturdays meant going on outings, or lazing about. I always made it a point to make Saturdays semisacred in terms of taking it easy.

Today was a perfect Saturday for that. The sun was warm and sunny, giving the Indian-summer day in September a golden glow. My windows were open to let the easy fresh air waft in and out of my apartment. My feet were propped up on my desk, and I was flipping through a magazine.

Midway through the magazine, a soft gust of air breezed into my apartment carrying the aromatic smells from the Chinese restaurant a couple of short blocks from me. It must have been early afternoon, and they were cooking Dim Sum. I hadn’t had Chinese food in a while, and the wonderful smells were filling my house and making me hungry. I tried to pick out what it was they were cooking. I could smell the sweet-and-sour sauces, the pot stickers, and some other pungent, saucy smells that I couldn’t quite identify. After about ten minutes of this, I couldn’t take any more; I put my magazine down, dragged my feet off the desk and onto the floor, and my body went out the door as if in a sleepwalking trance. I had to laugh at myself. It was like the cartoons I used to see on early Saturday morning TV, where you could see the smells of food floating by like ghosts, and the cartoon characters would catch a whiff of it and get carried along the floating aromas, undulating and traveling through the air, like fish in the water. I could practically see the smells from the Chinese kitchen, and it was as if my body were floating out of my apartment toward their source.

As I got closer to the restaurant, I got hungrier and more glad that I had followed my smelling impulses. This was one of the better restaurants in town, and you could get take-out orders from the back, but you had to go through the alley to get there. As I pulled open the door at the entrance, I noticed a little Chinese man hosing down some large plastic buckets that probably carried some kind of food they ordered in bulk. I guessed they were going to use the buckets to store something else.

He was wearing white pants, a greasy apron that was stained from food with red and black sauces, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He must have been in his late sixties or so—it was hard to tell—and his white hair slightly thinning. I didn’t think too much about it, except that there was something about him I couldn’t quite place my finger on. I went in the entrance with the sound of the water splashing in the bucket.

Inside, there were several other people waiting for take-out orders before me, and it gave me a chance to decide what it was I was going to have. The kitchen area was bustling with several workers, shouting and chopping food, slinging pans of hot oil and noodles, and the staccato bantering in Chinese that fit right in. After a couple of minutes, it was my turn to order.

“Uh, I guess I’ll have six pot stickers, an order of sweet-and-sour chicken, subgum lo mein, and shrimp in black bean sauce.” I was so hungry I didn’t stop to think that what I had just ordered would take me until the middle of next week to finish eating.

The girl at the counter quickly wrote some characters on a small pad of paper. “Pot stickers will take a little longer. They have to make them fresh. Be about fifteen minutes. Is that OK?” she asked quickly but politely.

“Sure, no problem,” I said. I paid her my money and got out of the way so the next customer could order. I felt a little crunched in the small take-out area, so I decided to wander about in the restaurant. By the lounge, there were several men standing near the TV. There was some kind of boxing match going on, and from the size of the crowd watching it, it must have been a championship fight. There was a camaraderie amongst them. I assumed for the most part, they were total strangers but the fight was a common meeting ground, and they were all talking to each other about the fighters.

“Look at the muscles on that dude! I hear he’s taken out over twenty-five guys by knockout,” one said.

“Takes an awful lot of strength to take a guy out with one punch,” said another.

“Naw. It’s all in speed and leverage. That skinny guy has just as many knockouts, and he’s not nearly as strong as the other.”

“Still takes a lot of strength just to be in that ring.”

“Yeah, you got that right.”

And on and on they went. The round ended, the men went for their drinks, the TV went to a shaving commercial with some women stroking a guy’s face, and I decided to go out for a while.

I went to the back again, so I could hear if they called my name for my order. As I opened the back door, I could again hear the spraying water in the plastic pails, the hollow splashing and gurgling from the hose, and then the pouring of the water into the alley. I didn’t want to appear nosey, but I was a bit curious about the little Chinese man hosing down those buckets. I ambled aimlessly about the alley where he was. This time I noticed a little more about him. He was small—five foot one or two inches—and couldn’t have weighed more than about a hundred pounds. I could imagine how thin he was by the way his clothes were hanging loosely on his frame. He moved in an easy manner, unlike the semifrantic pace of the other restaurant workers. He had a short goatee with just a few hairs, a couple of inches long. I walked a little closer to him and looked up at the sky, like there was something interesting up there besides what was usually there. He poured a bucket full of water into the alley, turning the dry, brownish-white concrete into a dark, shiny wet surface. As he turned the hose into another bucket, the splashing water made a hissing sound as it hit the inside of the bucket. As that bucket filled with water, he turned the hose into another and went to empty the one he had just filled.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watched with interest, as the buckets weren’t small by any means and, filled with water, must have been pretty heavy. But he tipped them over with ease. In fact, with so much ease, I wondered how such a little guy could have handled them so easily. Then looking at his hose in the other bucket, he spoke to me without looking, “Strength is not always apparent to the visible eye.”

“Excuse me?” I asked, cupping my hand to my ear, even though I had heard him perfectly well. It caught me off guard, as it seemed like such an off-the-wall thing to say to a stranger. He continued. “True inner strength is rarely seen, for it takes special eyes to see it,” he added, still looking into the bucket he was busily filling.

I walked over closer to him. My thoughts were turned to the men at the bar watching the boxing match and their comments on strength. It was true, the world based strength on how much one could move. Strength was a show of force against the world about you. But inner strength? I wondered about what he was telling me.

I walked still closer to make some sort of introduction of myself, but when he looked straight into my eyes, there was a recognition. It’s difficult to say what kind, but it was the look between two people—a shared knowingness, an instant communication that cuts through all the superfluous social greetings and behavior that act as buffers between men. It also hit me at this time that he had spoken to me in perfect English, without any trace of an accent. He moved away for a moment to turn off the water. When he came back, he was smiling warmly at me.

“In order to have strength, there must first be a goal by which to measure the degree of strength. True inner strength means the goal will be Self-Realization and then God-Realization. The measure of strength is how well a man can stay true to those goals. For example, those men boxing on TV.”

I wondered to myself, How in the world did he know what was going on in there? But I dismissed that thought and tried to concentrate on what he was saying.

“They are gaining strength in two ways. First, the outward strength in order to force their muscles on their opponent. They train long and hard to build this type of strength. Then there is the second kind of strength, inner strength. It has nothing to do with annihilating an opponent, but is the building of the inner foundation and balance so that nothing can shake one from this point. Every champion touches this inner reservoir at one time or another. The difference between the athlete and the man going for God-Realization is that the athlete is limited by the condition of his physical body. The man of God is limited only by his desire for the higher states.”

A car was coming through the alley, and I scooted closer to the man. The car passed us slowly and made a sizzling noise as the tires cut through the wet alleyway. The man moved back toward the building to make room for me and continued.

“The other factor, the most important one, is that an athlete is measured in competition with other men and ultimately must beat them in order to remain champion. The man going for God-Realization competes with no one but his own lower nature. As long as he remains in the lower worlds, there is never a final victory or defeat, but one endless struggle.

This inner strength is built around self-mastery of all that comes in his life. Not that he tries to control all things in his life, that would be an impossible and futile endeavor. What he tries to master are his actions and reactions to all that would come into his life. To be able to look and act upon all of life from the Soul point of view. To know when to assert himself and when to give in, but always to act in the name of love for all life. When man can live his life in conscious and willing love, when the angers and passions of the world around him bounce harmlessly off the glow of Spirit that surrounds him, when nothing can move him against his will—for his will has now become the will of the Sugmad—then this is true strength. Now, there is no measure, no separation of goal and beingness, for the individual and the goal are combined into one; he is on his way to true mastery!”

Smiling warmly, the man looked at me for a moment longer. The soft lines on his face reflected the strength of his will. I knew that the will of Sugmad was reflected in this small man’s face, and frail as his physical being was, he was one of the strongest men I’d ever encountered.

Presently, he turned back to washing the plastic buckets. He turned on the hose and sprayed water into the next pail, looking up and smiling at me one more time before engrossing himself in his labor. Not quite knowing what to do next, I finally started to move. I walked away, thanking him as I passed him. He just smiled and nodded at me and continued filling the bucket. I walked away in the daze of one who has heard slightly shocking news. As I turned the corner, I was joined by another person, who came upon me so quietly, I hadn’t time to react, except with surprise. It was Wah Z *.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asked with a touch of mischievousness in his friendly grin.
I stared at him blankly for a moment, before I realized that I was walking away without my food from the restaurant.

“Well I’ll be. I forgot my food!” I exclaimed. I made an about-face and strode purposefully back into the alley I’d just left. I could see the little Chinese man still washing the buckets. It struck me as a little odd that he would still be there, even though logically it would have been the normal thing. But this wasn’t a normal set of circumstances.

“Wah Z,” I asked, “Was that Chinese fellow who was talking to me about inner strength an ECK Master?”

Wah Z just smiled and looked at me, not saying anything. I continued, “I have a sneaky feeling that he was Lai Tsi.”

Wah Z still didn’t say anything, but kept that smile of his. When we approached the Chinese man, he had his back to us and was stooped over a large white bucket with the hose in it.

As I passed him and reached for the door handle, I said to him, “You had me so engrossed in what you were saying, I forgot my food!”

The man looked up at me in a startled manner, almost dropping the hose in the process. It was the same man, but it wasn’t! He was wearing the same clothes, had the same little white goatee and white hair that was thinning, but his eyes were different. And his face, though it was the same face, looked completely different. He looked at me and smiled hugely, and still half bent over, he nodded in quick jerky nods and in very broken English said something like, “sorry—yes—yes—sorry.”

It really threw me for a loop, and not wanting to appear too startled, I just smiled and nodded and went in to pick up my food. Wah Z waited for me outside. Inside, it was just as crowded as when I left. The girl reached for the brown paper bag with the receipt stapled on the outside with the Chinese characters written on it. I thanked her and went outside. As I opened the door, I could hear a roar from the bar area. Apparently someone on TV had just gotten knocked out or something.

“See you later,” I said to the little Chinese man who was still washing the buckets. He just smiled and nodded profusely, still stooped over his buckets.

I stopped and looked around, but Wah Z was gone. I looked up and down the alley, but not too long. If he wasn’t there at the door, I knew he wasn’t going to be anywhere else, at least not in his Light body. I walked the short distance back to my apartment alone.

Once inside, the food tasted as good as the aroma from the restaurant, only now, I had the wonderful smells coming from the white cartons in my own apartment.

As I finished my meal, I could still smell the food from the Chinese restaurant as an occasional gust of wind blew into my flat.

Funny, I thought to myself, a few minutes ago, when I smelled that wonderful aroma, all I could think about was food. Maybe it’s only because I just ate some of it, but now, when I smell Chinese food, I think of the little man washing those buckets with water—Lai Tsi.

I thought about what he had told me of inner strength. From my childhood and surroundings, it was ingrained in me that strength automatically meant some kind of force. But Lai Tsi and Wah Z and, as far as I could tell, all the other ECK Masters had an easiness about them. Maybe inner strength didn’t have to mean wearing blinders to keep from being affected by the outside world, that true inner strength meant getting out of the way so Spirit could have Its way in one’s life.

* * *

Saturday rolled around again. And again, it was another one of those days when the sun was warm and I could open my windows to let some fresh air in. It was late afternoon, maybe three or four o’clock, and I had just noticed that there was that nice smell from the Chinese restaurant again. It smelled delicious, but for some reason, I wasn’t in the mood for Chinese food this week. Maybe it was because I hadn’t finished what I ordered last Saturday until Tuesday night.

I sat reading with my feet propped up on my desk. Smelling the sweet and mildly pungent cooking from the Chinese restaurant, I didn’t think about food, I thought about inner strength and the ECK. And I thought about Lai Tsi and Wah Z. And thinking about inner strength, I didn’t feel powerful or strong at that moment, but somehow I knew I had a chance to gain some of that inner strength Lai Tsi talked about last week. The feeling was a happy, gentle reminder by the ECK, of the true lover. That in all of life’s surroundings, the ECK is always making Itself known to us in little ways, by little hints.

I put my book down on the table, eased back into my chair, and enjoyed the warm smells from the restaurant. It was pleasant and reminded me of pleasant things. As I sat with my eyes closed, letting the smells take me into worlds beyond my body, my thoughts drifted over to the restaurant—to the back entrance in the alley. Maybe it was my imagination, maybe not—after all, it was only a couple of short blocks from my apartment—but I could have sworn I heard a sound like the hissing of water in an empty bucket.

* The spiritual name of Sri Harold Klemp

Strona główna ECK Mistrzowie Lai Tsi