“Let me tell you about a little girl named Dorothy. Dorothy did not live in Kansas, but in San Diego, in an enormous old Victorian house. Her family had lived there for generations. Everybody had his or her own room, and there were extra rooms and cubbyholes everywhere, as well as an attic and a basement. When Dorothy was still a tiny girl, she learned that there was something odd about the house: up on the top floor of that old Victorian mansion there was a locked room. As far back as people could remember, the room had always been locked. There was a rumor that once it had been unlocked, but no one knew what was in the room. The lock on the door to the room was strange, and no one had ever been able to find a way to open it. The windows to the room were blocked somehow, too. Once Dorothy had climbed up a ladder on the outside of the house and tried to peer inside. But she could see nothing.
Most of the family just got used to the room with its locked door. They knew it was there, but they didn’t want to concern themselves. So it was just not mentioned. Dorothy was different, however. From the time that she was small, she was obsessed with that room and what was in there. She felt that she had to get it unlocked. In most ways, Dorothy lived her life like a normal little girl. She grew; she had pigtails; she became a teenager; she got the latest hairdo; she had her best girlfriend, her best boyfriend; she got excited about the newest makeup and the latest hit song. She was pretty normal. But she never lost her obsession with the locked room. In a way, it dominated her life. Sometimes she would go up and sit in front of the room and just look at that door and wonder about it.
As Dorothy got a bit older, she sensed that the room had some connection with what was missing in her life. So she began various trainings and practices in the hope of finding the secret to opening the door. She tried out lots of different things: she went to this and that center, and this and that teacher, searching for the formula to unlock the door. She went to workshops; she got herself rebirthed; she tried hypnosis. She did everything; yet nothing unlocked the door for her. Her searching went on for years, all through college and into graduate school. She developed techniques to put herself into various mental states, but she was still unable to open the door.
Then one day when she came home, the house was deserted. She went upstairs to the top floor and sat in front of the locked door. Using one of her esoteric practices, she went into a deep state of meditation. On an impulse, she reached out a hand and pushed on the door—and it began to open. She was terrified. In all the long years of trying to unlock the door, nothing like this had ever happened. Dorothy was frightened and excited at the same time. Trembling, she made herself go through the door. And found….
Disappointment and confusion. Dorothy found herself not in a strange, new, wonderful space in the mysterious room, but right back on the first floor of that old Victorian house, in the midst of all the old, familiar things. She had the same view, she was in the same location with the usual furniture; everything was just as it always had been. Disappointed and puzzled at the same time, some hours later she climbed the stairs to the top floor and went to the mysterious room. The door was still locked. Dorothy had opened the door—and she hadn’t opened it.
Life went on. Dorothy got married. She had a couple of children. She still lived in the Victorian house, with her family. She was a good wife and mother. Still, she never gave up her obsession. In fact, her one experience of opening the door motivated her even more. She spent a lot of time on the top floor in front of the locked door, sitting cross-legged, trying to open the door. She’d done it once before, she could do it again. And sure enough, after years of trying, it happened again: she pushed on the door, and it opened. She thought excitedly to herself, “This will be the time!” She went through the door—and again found herself back on the first floor of that same old Victorian house, living with her husband and children. She raced up the stairs to the mysterious room, and what did she find? The door was locked.
What can you do? A locked door is a locked door. Dorothy continued her life. The kids grew. She acquired a few gray hairs. Dorothy still spent a lot of time sitting in front of the locked door, however. She was a fairly good wife and mother, but her attention was still mostly on the locked room. And she was a persistent, diligent person; she didn’t give up easily. From time to time, she would manage to open the door and move through it, but always she ended up on the first floor, right back where she lived.
All the while, the house was slowly filling up with stuff. The family members seemed to accumulate more and more things, and the extra rooms became storerooms for junk. The house became so stuffed that there was no room for guests at all and hardly enough space for the family themselves. There was no room in the house for anything but Dorothy, her husband, and her children—which was just as well, because they were all so concerned about themselves that they could hardly think about taking care of anything else.
Gradually, Dorothy’s obsession wore down. Her struggle to open that door began to get a bit old. Instead of spending so much time up in front of the door, she spent a bit more time with her children and her grandchildren, and taking care of the house: getting the floors refinished, redoing the drapes, and so on. The house was not in bad shape, but it had been a little neglected, because Dorothy had been busy sitting in front of the door. Her attention slowly shifted back into taking care of the everyday things that needed to be taken care of. It was a slow process. Occasionally she would go up to the top floor and look at the door, but if she opened it, she knew what she’d find. Very slowly, discouragement and disappointment settled in. More and more, she forgot about anything except just living her life, taking care of things, moment to moment. And then one day she was up on the top floor and she happened to look over at the door that was locked. Wow! It was wide open! Inside, in plain sight, was a comfortable guest room. There was a fine bed and a dresser and all of the small items that would make a guest comfortable.
Seeing this wonderful, spacious guest room, Dorothy realized what had become of the rest of the house. She saw how crowded and cramped everything was and how difficult it was to move around freely in the house. With that realization, change began. Without her doing much of anything, the rooms in that old Victorian mansion began to unstuff themselves. There began to be room for more and more things and people in the house. Space appeared. It was as if all the stuff was insubstantial, ghostly junk. It wasn’t really there, after all. The house returned to what it had been all along. In fact, there had always been plenty of space for guests, and Dorothy now realized that the door had never been locked in the first place; it was always open. Only her rigid pushing had kept it shut.
This is our basic illusion about practice: that the door is locked. The illusion is inevitable: we all have it, to some degree. As long as we think the door is shut, it is shut. To try to open it, we do everything. We go to this or that center; we do workshops; we try this or that. Ultimately we find that the door was never shut. Yet Dorothy’s life of vain effort was perfect for her. That’s what she had to do. In fact, that’s what we all have to do. We have to give our practice everything we have, in order to realize that from the very beginning, there’s nothing but perfection. The room is open, the house is open, if we don’t clutter it with our phantom junk. But there’s no way to know this until we know it...”
~ Charlotte Joko Beck. Nothing Special: Living Zen
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