A close friend from my college days, “Lia”, contacted me a few weeks back to let me know that her mom had died. It wasn’t unexpected. Well into her nineties, she had been in poor health for the last few years.
After a long phone call, I sat in silence for awhile. Then, I went into the kitchen and took my time carefully washing some good, short-grain, sweet, sushi rice. A single serving and some filtered water went into the cooker. What emerged went into a lone, blue rice bowl. I ate the rice in silence.
And then, I carefully washed the bowl.
—
I met Lia’s mom during either my first or second year in college in southern California. Lia was a Chem, and I had a couple of classes with her before I decided to ditch the idea of a Pre-Med. She was also a fairly serious student, though surprisingly adventurous in her free time.
On several occasions, I accompanied Lia to her parents’ home, usually after her father had been admitted to the hospital due to a recurring leukemia. She’d look in on her mom and make sure that she was alright. And then Lia and I would head off to do something together.
Lia would always apologize for the side-trips, but I really didn’t mind. Her mom was an intelligent and curious person, and I liked talking with her. One Fourth-of-July, I even accompanied Lia for a family gathering at her parents’ home.
The years in college passed, and Lia moved on to a career and a graduate program in the Bay Area. Meanwhile, I finagled my way into my own thing. But we stayed in touch, getting together several times every year. It was just around the time I’d started my own graduate work that Lia’s dad died. She said that she was surprised how much it had affected her.
A few months later, I was making one of my twice-weekly trips down the I-5, shuttling some mechanical parts from my project through California’s central valley. It was a hot and gray summer day, and the air-conditioner on my old Toyota pickup consisted of a spray-bottle filled with water and a rolled-down window through which a familiar stench assaulted my senses.
I still remember the moment as I drove past Kettleman City, which was at the time a literal pile-of-shit. I looked over to see the cattle populating a vast feed-lot next to the highway, standing shoulder-to-shoulder upon a mountain of their own excrement. Suddenly, every uncertainty and self-doubt, every second-guess or frustration, every fear of utter failure flooded into my awareness like the smell of inevitable slaughter. This was my life.
A few hours later, I dropped off the parts at Cal Poly Pomona, where they would be re-machined according to a twice-weekly schedule. Their replacements in the rotation were loaded into the back of my old truck, ready for the trip back up in a few days. And then, I sat in the college parking lot, overwhelmed by the thought of driving through city traffic back to my place near the university. I just couldn’t go any further. And then I remembered that Lia’s mom lived not too far from the college.
For the next several months, I stopped by to visit with her at least once a week, usually right after my Cal Poly drop-offs. Most of the time, I would only stay for an hour or so, long enough to decompress from the tedium of my drives. But there were a couple of times when we talked for hours, sometimes eating dinner together while sharing stories about our lives. One night, she asked about my Buddhist upbringing, curious how it had colored my perspective of life. My response was to share a parable that my dad had told me when I was young…
A devoted young monk had come to a monastery, committed to finding enlightenment. To this end, he had taken upon himself the task of meditation upon rubbing bricks together until they were as polished as mirrors. Of course, this was an impossible task, and so the monk meditated constantly. Day and night, he rubbed bricks together, scraping them back-and-forth until they were ground into dust.
Eventually tiring of the young monk’s incessant grinding, the other monks went to their teacher, imploring him to do something. The perpetual noise was keeping others awake at night and interfered with their own meditations. And the new monk neglected the temple, contributing nothing while creating a terrible mess. And so the teacher went to speak with him.
“Have you found anything in your meditations?” he asked the young monk.
The young monk responded that he had not. “I don’t understand,” he continued. “I have committed myself entirely to this meditation, but it has not brought me any closer to enlightenment.”
“Perhaps you are meditating on the wrong thing?” advised the teacher.
“Then upon what should I meditate?” asked the young monk.
His teacher raised a hand toward the monastery. “What needs doing?” he asked.
The young monk was puzzled, but looked around and saw a stack of rice bowls next to a wash-basin. “The rice bowls need washing,” he replied.
“Then wash the rice bowls,” implored his teacher.
—
It was around a year later, my graduate work since finished and having moved on to another project in Seattle, when a mysterious box arrived in the mail. Inside was a single rice bowl, and a note from Lia’s mom. She thanked me for coming to visit her during what she explained had been a low point in her life, after having lost her husband. Convincing her to “wash the rice bowls”, she said, had given her something worthwhile upon which to meditate.
I wrote Lia’s mom a long letter that night, letting her know that the favor had been reciprocated. In a moment of lost direction, it had allowed me the chance to see my own rice bowls.
And then, I called my dad.
Luminous Aether 
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