Zen and the Art of Dog Washing

The Chinese Buddhists got close…but there’s no faster way of achieving sudden enlightenment than through the washing of dogs.

Of course, the Chinese only skinned them to roast on a spit for dinner. But not Americans. We’ve found something strangely soothing in the cleansing of dogs, a superior method of transcending rational thought. There’s no need to sit in painful postures muttering mindless mantras gleaned from fortune cookies in dog Latin to attain the apex of human reasoning.

Perhaps you’ve tried raising your thought process while scrubbing your mutt and watching on TV the nadir of all humanity, Glenn Beck, and his rabid, paroxysmal fascination with a red hotline to nowhere. Alaska Sen. Stevens and once-governor Palin meditated and stoked each other’s fantasies on a bridge to nowhere. Some suggested it was the zenith of illumination possible for these two artic artifacts, relics of the ice age era before common sense had been discovered.

The reigning Prince of paparazzi photo-opts, the POTUS Grin Master, continues to strut in ethereal mid-air over a chasm supported by Marxist enchantments, ginning up an esoteric canticle of “bridge of hope, we can, we can, we can.” Following blindly in his march to nowhere is a mesmerized, chanting mob of witless and weak-minded minions. Anybody with one brain cell wouldn’t Zen into such bunk!

While washing doggies is sometimes comedic, it still exceeds such human idiocy. Dog lovers everywhere recommend it for comic relief. Tonight I washed two Westies, black with dirt from the day’s pursuit of moles and lizards. Tenderly I coaxed them, one by one, into the laundry sink spa, a bubble bath, foaming with bath salts and shampoo. Did they like it? What do you think? We were all in the Zen Zone!

Once in, I transcended the Dog Whisperer, praising them on their transformation from a dog to an angel or a snowflake or a cumulus cloud. Emerson and Thoreau were resurrected right there in the laundry room while my own mental dirt and grime fell off. We entered the world of the Transcendentalists.

Anita Dunn, the President’s communication director, said by some to have been the former chamber maid to Deepak Chopra, was recently overheard quoting some mantra from Mao Zedong. In rhythmic chants of a Vedic hymn, over and over, she uttered something along the lines of, “energy has been too cheap for too long,” all the while seated at the feet of Green Zen Master Gore. The Press can’t be trusted to report accurately these days, so the exact context of this may be suspect.

Seekers of this higher plain of Zen thought include the rich and famous as well. Today it was reported that the Omaha Oracle, Sir Buffett of Berkshire, has purchased another railroad. Supposedly he got this Awakening while sitting in a lotus position upon the rails in the recent full moonlight in Folkston, Georgia, the train-switching Mecca of America. Others speculated he had finally transcended a youthful paranoia caused by his mother who refused to allow him to play choo choo with toy trains after the age of 40, and this was payback. Hoaxes abound.

This opens another can of meditative worms…the recent hoaxes. Balloon Boy, for example. Such enlightenment often comes in strange places, like the attic. While the balloon was sailing helplessly across the mid-western plains, balloon boy was chomping on a Dominos Delivers. On the inside flap of the box was the pizza mantra, a devilish diction devised by the in-house guru of gruyere, “Pepperoni is Portnoy’s Portal to Power.” The net result of this hoax, of course, was the enlightenment of the American citizenry, who have finally reached that state of Nirvana where they realize that they’ve been gamed all along.

Zen and the Art of Dog Washing. You don’t get it? Try this. Zen and Art are creative acts, ways to zone out of the cumulative effects of life’s dirt and grime. Though temporary and transitory, the reconnection to the undefiled inner child produces a cleansing Illumination.

Don’t have a dog? Shame. Then try baseball---a close second. It beats Beck, and that’s Zen of the utmost reformation!

Bud Hearn
November 5, 2009