Outer Space ... Spirituality ...
Being a born geek and having grown up in the days of the “space race” in the 1960s, I just had to watch the local PBS station’s recent replay of “The NASA Story: America in Space”, a 2009 BBC production. During the second episode, which was about the moon landings, Apollo flight director Gene Kranz spoke of what it was like at Mission Control during one of the “moon missions”. He recalls telling his people, all those intense geeky fellows with the horn-rimmed glasses, short-sleeved white shirts and black ties, that this is what they were born for; these are the peak moments of their lives. (He also told them in a father-like way that he would support all of their decisions.) When you walked thru the door into the control room and saw all of them at their control panels, hunched over flickering screens and pouring over binders holding charts and instructions, Kranz said that you could feel the atmosphere “crackling with energy”.
This is how Kranz helped pull off NASA’s and America’s greatest techno-miracles. It’s sad how the “Zen of Kranz” was lost somehow during the Space Shuttle days (Challenger, Columbia . . . and now, the end of American manned space flight).
As a Zen practitioner, I think that Mr. Kranz pretty aptly described what we seek in Zen. If you were to walk into a zendo during a meditation session, it would seem pretty still, almost like a morgue. But if the practitioners are truly doing what Zen is about, there should be a “crackling” of energy in their midst. At Mission Control, Kranz and his troop of techies were entirely focused; no day-dreaming, no angst, no idle chit-chat. Everyone was at the top of their game, playing it to the hilt. Another example might be a musician playing in the New York Philharmonic. She or he melts into the concert, she becomes the music; it takes her over, sweeps her normal day-to-day worries or amusements off the table. Another example? How about a figure skating team at the Olympics? Again, they become the skating; they are totally alive in it, and it in them.
In Zen – in theory, anyway – we seek to uncover, deep within ourselves, the truest » continue reading …
