The Helicopter................................................................................
One day while listening to a Teisho at Mount Baldy
Zen Center given by Sasaki Roshi, he mentioned that
one of his students from the Los Angeles center had
complained about helicopters flying overhead during
meditation and at night. The student was deeply
disturbed and distracted by their passing. Cimarron is
located in one of the poorer and more crime ridden
parts of town, and police and news helicopters are
ever present.
Sasaki had responded to him, “You only feel this
way because it is not your helicopter. If it were your
helicopter you would delightedly point to the sky and
tell others, ‘That is my helicopter!’ Because it is not
yours, you feel irritated because it interrupts your
pattern and what you are doing. But if it were your
helicopter, it would be following your bidding.”
Is not that true for all of us? It is when we think
something is out of our control, that it becomes an
irritant, whether it is our obsessive thinking, or the
noise of the air conditioner at the apartment next
door, or a barking dog.
Now this is what spirituality is all about:
identification and what we identify with. If we can