Revisiting - A Handful of Salt

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Salt in glass by the side of a midwestern lake

Inside the word "emergency" is "emerge"; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters."
— Rebecca Solnit (Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power)

“what happens if joy is not separate from pain? What if joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another? Or even more to the point, what if joy is not only entangled with pain, or suffering, or sorrow, but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things? What if joy, instead of refuge or relief from heartbreak, is what effloresces from us as we help each other carry our heartbreaks?"
— Ross Gay (Inciting Joy: Essays)

I’ve posted this Zen story a couple of years ago, but I’ve been thinking a lot about it today so I’m going to go ahead and revisit it. The story goes….Once an unhappy young apprentice came to an old master and told the master that he was deeply sad and asked for a solution. The old master instructed the unhappy young apprentice to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it. Then he asked “How does it taste?” “Terrible!” spat the young apprentice. The master nodded and asked the young apprentice to take another handful of salt and put it in the lake. The two walked in silence to a nearby lake and the apprentice swirled his handful of salt into the lake. The older master said, “now drink the lake.” The apprentice cupped his hands and drank. Again, the old master asked, “How does it taste?” “Good!” said the apprentice. The master then asked, “Do you taste the salt?” and the apprentice smiled and said, “No.” The master sat beside the trouble young apprentice and took his hands. “The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same. But the amount we taste depends on the container we put it into. So when you are in pain, the wisest thing to do is to enlarge your sense of things. Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”

Earlier today I was creatively spinning my wheels and finding it hard to focus. I‘d been feeling the weight of worry and anger about several of the first acts of the incoming state and national administrations. So I did what I often do when I’m feeling a bit stuck, I took a break, bundled up and went out for a walk in the woods with my dogs. The air was biting cold but I walked on, lost in thought, my head down and my mittened hands plunged deep into the pockets of my down jacket. I wasn’t paying attention to much beyond my feet and the inner workings of my own mind until finally across the path came a flash of the most brilliant blue. The sun lit up the wings of the bluebird in such a way that they literally glowed. My heart opened with an unexpected ache, like cold water on a tender tooth, and I felt something heavy loosen and joy expand what was feeling concentrated and salty, and I thought, “Stop being a glass. Become the lake.”

I know when I am angry my vision narrows. When I am worried or in pain my world tends to get smaller and feel more confined. In those moments I am drinking a glass of water that contains a handful of salt. Physically, a human being cannot survive on water so salty; you can drink the full glass and still be utterly parched. Drinking a glass of water that contains a handful of salt will not quench or help or satisfy. But that same amount of salt in a freshwater lake is diffused, the salt becomes part of a larger whole.

When I am suffering, in pain, worried or outraged, it is wise to enlarge my sense of things. Yes, there is a handful of salt, but the lake is also filled with so much more. My life may have its struggles, but there is still the light on the wings of a winter bluebird, there is still time in the greenhouse at Marcia’s farm, there are still friends and family and songs and gatherings and faithful dogs, there is still chatting and laughing with my daughter on zoom. There is still music and poetry, potlucks and homemade soup on the stove. There is birdsong, kindness, courage and decency. There is beauty and there is a handful of salt. Sometimes there might be 2 handfuls of salt.

I think the point of the story is not to deny the salt, to pretend it isn’t there. I think the old story is about how we negotiate the presence of that handful of salt. To know it, acknowledge it, feel it—but then to enlarge to heart and mind and spirit in a way that helps me carry that salt in a more life giving way.

In such troubled times, it can feel as if the world has poured a handful of salt into my open palm. But that is not the end of the story. Life is going to bring salt. But oh my friends, there is a wider lake and the most beautiful living water to help us carry what might otherwise leave us in despair or stuck.