The Work of Great Peace Has No Sign
by Robert Reese
The accomplishing work of great peace has no sign;
The family way of peasants is most pristine--
Only concerned with village songs and festival drinking,
How would they know of the virtues of Shun or the benevolence of Yao?
--Verse, Case Five, Book of Serenity, Qingyuan and the Price of Rice
Miles Robinson was a new kid at Sierra Elementary School. Miles was an affable, twelve-year-old given to extravagant gestures and humorous performances for the benefit of the entire sixth-grade class. He was a black student, but for the most part, socialized easily and readily with the entire class, both black and white. After a few months we had forged a guarded friendship and I had forgotten he was black. The racial divide only became apparent when he visited with other black students during lunch. I didn’t seem to see Miles when he was with the group of black boys—I only saw the group of black youth clustered along bleachers, their hands in brown lunch bags. He had been in boy scouts with me and had been the number two-ranked swimmer in all of Sacramento, and had expected that kind of glory going forward. Miles focused with precision during that time, eventually becoming the drummer with a rock band of some note—but left any job where he wasn’t learning or when his self-worth felt compromised.
Sometimes he would visit after school. My parents enjoyed Miles because he was lavishly polite. We would lay in my front yard, eat Tuna from a tin can and Ritz Crackers and watch the neighbors. I remember we would ponder things. We considered, for instance, how much a tattoo would hurt. Mr. Spence, who seemed to be from the South, was a Navy veteran and had a tattoo. We also wondered what the point of school was, managed infatuations on TV actresses and spent time discerning the adults in the neighborhood. There was a large, lumbering guy down the street who tried to be funny all the time and if people didn’t laugh at him he became angry. We studied an older boy who lived to the north. He would wear patterned summer shirts and seemed to spend an eccentric amount of time in his basement making explosive devices. On days not remotely near July or any other holiday, detonations would mysteriously issue from his driveway. He seemed aloof and pretended to not be impressed with anything. Often, unprompted, he would show us a plastic bag of fireworks recently added to his arsenal. If angered or annoyed, he headed straight out to his sun-drenched drive-way and let off a flurry of his loudest explosives. Nothing felt permanent around him.
The only things that remained constant in Sacramento during the summer was the heat and boredom. In the late summer there were weepy-looking sycamore trees and streams of morning light. The electric sounds of insects was consistently in the air. The mornings held an ale-colored sunlight and pale, washed-out sky with whorls of cirrus clouds so high they cast no shadow. In distances, the fields would shimmer in the heat. Miles and I were both born in Sacramento, three months apart, and our parents didn’t know one another. We didn’t talk about our parents.
To assuage the boredom, we invented physical games to rival the neighbor kids, usually something involving dogs and wagons. One fall we discovered my parent’s old skis. We stood in the warm afternoon air, humid and dusty, spreading skis, poles and clothing out on the grass. Miles and I both needed ski pants, pants to end all pants, with white stripes which we could only wear for about 15 minutes in the Sacramento heat. The ski pants were from an outdoors store that sold Velcro, energy bars, beef jerky and flashlights attached to key chains, insect repellent and mini fans.
The backyard on 25th street was a rectangle of newly mowed grass flanked by dark green shrubbery. In the northern corner a large kumquat tree shaded steps above the garage and a clothes line that was fringed by dry grass and hard weeds, old dandelions snowing and exploding to the touch. The yard would metamorphose according to season. One spring a large section of the yard served as high jump and pole vault pit, with cardboard boxes from Compton’s Market as padding. Another year, the grass was transformed into Go-Cart oval. A year later, slalom courses were carefully defined by sticks and flags. Ski boots were worn under cut-offs in early September; but as the days cooled-down, shorts were replaced by stripped latex ski pants and sweaters. After warm-ups, Miles Robinson and I would execute vigorous jump turns, aggressive short swing turns, graceful kick-turns and the more challenging tip-drops. We would practice race starts, crouching down, poles in balanced at the front, exploding through the start. Awed (or so we thought) by our winter sports prowess and skill, neighbors would peer over fences, jaws dropped in thrilled affect. For a time, the steps to the loft above the garage was considered acquisitively as a possible ski slope. (Why not? The reasoning went, because the steps were previously employed as toboggan run after the guardrails were a padded with cardboard).
In play, we remember that the way of great peace has no sign. It has no fixed address, or form. We cannot say beforehand what peace will look like, or what we need to do to accomplish the way of peace. It might not arise because of a statement, law or decree. Serenity among human beings is not a fixed thing. It might arrive because we make it alive in our hearts and minds. Children playing in the backyard could be our village song and festival drinking. Our being together in meditation and in dialog or play might not be different from “the family way of peasants is most pristine.” Because peace has no sign, it might be accomplished in any circumstance, with anyone. It might appear in our own backyard, but we have to learn how to sing our village song.