Mockingbirds and Zen

The Boston Fern sways above, while two potted aloe veras secure papers to the table. I plop into a chair under the pergola on a beautiful, late-spring Texas morning after last night’s rains (!) and cooler temperatures (!!). On the table before me lies the Inter-  Library Loan book I picked up yesterday—Existential and Ontological Dimensions of Time in Heidegger and Dogen. Dōgen was a Japanese Zen master who lived from 1200–1253; Heidegger (1889–1976) a German existentialist.

But my plowing through this philosophy in search of fodder for chapter sixteen of Finding Home (the book I am writing) is interrupted by two young mockingbirds perched on the cedar picket fence eight yards north. They are hungry. In raspy, adolescent peeps they inform their beleaguered mother of that fact. Each time one peeps he (or she) rises on his toes a centimeter to emphasize his point. Now a third hungry sibling joins the chorus.

They know nothing of, and care less for, Dōgen and Heidegger. They want only worms or bugs, and they want them now. Which of us is more immersed in real life, laser-focused on the present moment? From whom am I likely to learn more about Zen this morning—the book or the birds?