Monks and Crows

A talk by Jan Chozen Bays

 

A crow has come to live among us and to teach us. One of our monks found it entangled in the blackberry bushes, and brought it to me. By one of those mysterious coincidences that seem to occur in monasteries, the visitor I was talking with at the time had raised two orphan crows. She told us that the red color in the crow's mouth and his blue eyes identified him as a juvenile, unable to feed himself. Probably he had just left the nest and was learning to fly when a cat attacked him and tore off his wing feathers, leaving him unable to fly. If we released him he would quickly be killed by the coyotes and feral cats in our forest. She showed us how to force feed him, and we put him in one of our interior gardens. 

We all took turns caring for him, poking food past his amazing tongue (like a fat red leaf mounted on a stalk) and into his crop every few hours. We all found ourselves itching in the meditation hall, and discovered that wild birds have mites. We watched his wing feathers grow longer day by day and laughed, watching him learn to clamber like a little black monkey up the shrubs in the garden to get away from us. He screeched to be fed, but ran away when we came with food. He hated to be captured and held down, but loved the feeding that came with it. With each bolus of food down his maw, his frantic squawking became quieter, and then muted until he wouldn't open his beak at all, even for his favorite, a meal worm.  He watched us go to and fro in the halls through the glass of the interior garden, and would come closer to the glass if we stopped. This led to the eerie feeling that we were the animals in the zoo and he was the interested visitor. Who was watching whom?

One day he made his break. He climbed to the top of a rhododendron and jumped to the monastery roof. He was seen and chased as he hopped and fluttered his way across the lawn to the forest edge, but he was determined not to be caught and moved quickly. For a day he sat in a broad leaf maple tree, calling to us but climbing away, ever higher in the tree when we approached. That night we set a Havaheart trap for him and caught a cat. We knew that he could not forage for food or fly, and so we resigned ourselves to losing him to the coyotes. 

The next morning, as we prepared for our first ordination ceremony, a visitor excitedly informed us that there was a crow sitting in a bush at the monastery entrance, a crow that let her approach and take a close-up photo! He let himself be caught and returned to the interior garden, where he is as I write. He has not made another attempt to escape, and calls to us when he is lonely. 

Isn't this the way we approach our religious life? We come to it spiritually starved, unable to feed ourselves, demanding food from those around us. And yet, we object and run away when our teachers approach with the very food we need, the curious food of meditation practice. Once we are able to take it in, our frantic restlessness and reactivity calms down. 

This food is nourishing and not at all filling. Actually, it is emptying. 

We submit to the discipline of being fed with spiritual food for awhile. We suffer a little bit less and become a little bit stronger. It is then that we decide to take things in our own hands and make a break. We leave our teacher and sangha and stop practicing. It works for a little while, but soon we make a humbling discovery.  We can't go back to being who we were -- (somewhat) happy in the ignorance of our own and other's suffering. 

If things go well, eventually we hop or fly back home. We settle down again, doing the hard work that must be done in order to grow up, to reach our full potential as spiritually mature human beings. 

Zen Master Tenkei Denson was seen one day feeding some crows. Later he was seen sweeping ants off the path. A monk asked him, "Why do you feed the crows and sweep away the ants?" He said, "Because I like crows and I don't like ants." Now we know a little more about why he liked them. 

Zen Master Ikkyu was enlightened by the call of a crow. He wrote several poems about this experience.   

Passing an overturned carriage, the driver snaps awake.
Yield to sleep and disaster is sure to follow.
Half drunk, half sober I wandered through the night;
then a crow call, and the moon sank to a midnight bell.

Crows are very smart. Our crow seemed to realize that, as much as it wanted freedom, it wanted life more. If only human beings were that wise.

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