Burning down the hermit's hut

So I just finished re-reading Robert Aitken's Mind of Clover and of everything I've read what struck me the most of this entire book was The Withered Tree koan. It goes something as follows

There was an old woman who supported a hermit. For twenty years she always had a girl, sixteen or seventeen years old, take the hermit his food and wait on him.

One day she told the girl to give the monk a close hug and ask, “What do you feel just now?”

The hermit responded,

An old tree on a cold cliff; Midwinter – no warmth.

The girl went back and told this to the old woman. The woman said, “For twenty years I’ve supported this vulgar good-for-nothing!” So saying, she threw the monk out and burned down the hermitage.

How many of us are aspiring to be the hermit that is far removed from the graspings of the world? Removed from the very trappings that many consider an essential part of the human experience. I stumble into this pitfall very often and constantly need to remind myself about the context of various ideas and how they don't necessarily apply to my situation. For example, most literature I read on Buddhism or Zen is written by monks or Zen masters, titles I'll never have in this lifetime because I'm married with children and very much engaged in the suffering in the world. I'm a meat eater by necessity because my job is very demanding both physically and mentally and a lack of high energy foods makes me very sluggish and feeling weak and unable to perform my duties to my greatest ability.

However, there was a time I refrained from eating meat, a time I withdrew from my wife's advances, a time I meant to withdraw from the rat race of the corporate world, a time I shunned friends and deleted all of my social media accounts, a time I refrained from speaking, all just so I could retire to a hut in the woods.......but that's not where you guys need me is it? In doing these things I am no different than that vulgar hermit who has grown cold and bitter in his attempts to detach from the world. I have not developed compassion and for this I am failing all of you.

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from Buddhism https://ift.tt/2FNGgh6